


Valuable Asset

by Unsentimentalf



Category: Blake's 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-16
Updated: 2014-04-17
Packaged: 2018-01-16 00:04:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 25,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1324231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unsentimentalf/pseuds/Unsentimentalf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after 'Project Avalon'. </p><p> </p><p>  <i>'It's your misfortune to be worth a great deal, Blake.  The others weren't."</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Nausea

Blake had never remembered waking up feeling quite this lousy, not even years ago when he'd frequently drunk more than he ought. His head hurt, his stomach was churning and he couldn't move his arms. 

He opened his eyes a fraction, shut then again against the blinding pain in his head. Nausea rose and he barely manage to turn his head to the side before he was vomiting. 

"Damn," a familiar voice muttered. Hands around his shoulders pulled him firmly up to a sitting position. A bowl was wedged between his knees and for the next few minutes he did nothing but retch, eyes tightly shut. 

He was aware, distantly, that it was Avon with his arm around his shoulders, which was odd. He'd never known Avon be even slightly solicitous before. The man wasn't panicking so he didn't. Not at first, anyway. Not until everything in his stomach and what felt like most of the lining was transferred to the bowl and he could think about something else. Then he started to worry. 

"My arms," he said. "Avon, I can't feel my arms! My hands..." What had happened to them? 

"They're behind your back." Avon said, as if it were perfectly normal for them to be there. "I'll be back shortly." 

Blake squeezed his eyes open again to see Avon and the bowl leaving. He was in his own quarters, sitting fully clothed on his bed, his face now thankfully far away from the vomit stain down the side of the mattress. Tugs established that Avon had been right: his wrists and ankles were held in some sort of padded restraint. He couldn't remember anything that might have led to this. They'd delivered Avalon- the real one - to one of her fellow resistance groups and come back onto the ship. He'd decided to get some rest and then? 

"Zen? " he tried, his voice rasping." Report on current status."

Silence. 

"Zen! Respond! "

Nothing. 

He tried shouting for the others, but all that happened was that his throat got worse and Avon eventually reappeared with a glass of water 

"What the hell is going on?" Blake croaked. 

"Drink this slowly." Avon held the glass up to his lips. It got rid of the worst of the sour taste and eased his voice a little. 

"Avon, please!" He was starting to get more than a little irritated now. 

The other man drew up a chair, sat facing him. "You've been unconscious for two and a half days; anaesthetic gas in the air supply. That's caused the nausea and probably some other lingering effects; sore throat, headache, confusion, dehydration. Drink plenty of water and you should feel fine in a few hours." 

Blake struggled to think clearly. Avon looked unharmed. "What about the others?" 

"No longer an issue."

Avon must have caught his horrified expression. "Not dead, no. Disembarked." 

"What's going on?"

Avon half shrugged. "Nothing terribly dramatic or even unpredictable. I've merely taken over the ship."

Blake blinked at him, tugged harder at the restraints. "What do you mean, taken over? You marooned them somewhere?"

"Hardly marooned. I teleported them down close to where we left Avalon. They've got her contacts, their guns and a substantial percentage of what was left of Liberators' liquid assets- easily sufficient to take them anywhere in the quadrant they might want to go, or even to buy themselves a very small spaceship if they prefer."

He smiled, a little twistedly, at Blake. "Since I was getting both Liberator and you out of the bargain, I felt able to be reasonably generous." 

"Getting me? What do you want with me?" Blake was starting to wonder if the man had gone mad, or if he had. 

"I want to trade you in, of course. If I'm offering the Federation's most wanted felon and their most wanted ship I can ask a price high enough to get everything I need."

Blake stared at him, unbelieving. "You can't give me back to the Federation." 

"Sell, not give. It's your misfortune to be worth a great deal, Blake. The others weren't."

Avon stood up. "You'll need the bathroom, I imagine, and to change the bed cover. I will release you for a few minutes. You'll recognise this gun." He held up the ugly stun weapon they'd recovered from the Federation guards. "As you'll recall, it won't kill you - you're far too valuable for that - but I've modified it a little and now it will knock you down quite effectively. I can anaesthetise you again for the entire trip if I need to, or keep you in restraints and put up with the resultant mess. Zen no longer recognises your voice print and has specific instructions about ignoring any voice but mine. Any attempt to use any of the guns including this one will result in non-lethal but extremely unpleasant feedback. The teleport is secured. For your own comfort I suggest that you co-operate. Do you understand?"

Blake nodded stiffly, nausea rising again. He didn't want to soil himself and he didn't want to do anything rash until he'd had a chance to assess the situation. Avon tapped on a remote control and the restraints slid open. 

Blake stood under the shower, trying to think of something more constructive than just Avon's perfidy. The ship he could understand- the man had form, after all - but selling him back to the enemy? He thought he'd come to know Kerr Avon better than that but when had the man ever claimed to be driven by anything but pure self interest? Avon was sitting on his bed, gun across his knees, watching him. This was all carefully planned, clearly. He wasn't going to be easy to overpower, or to escape. 

It wasn't as if Avon didn't have any conscience at all. Blake was sure that he was telling the truth about leaving the others with sufficient resources. He could have just left them on a random planet with nothing at all. Blake sighed. Bitter as the thought was, he was going to have to talk to the man. 

He got his first real chance at conversation, or confrontation, a few hours later when Avon brought him some supper, releasing his hands again so that he could feed himself. Blake sniffed at the food, thinking about refusing but he was too hungry to be keen on a hunger strike and he suspected there wouldn't be enough time for his fasting to cause Avon any problems before they were at their destination. Talking of which... 

"Where exactly are we going?"

"You don't need to know."

"I'm curious, though. The entire journey, you said, as if it was a long way, yet the ship's not done more than around standard one point five since I woke up. It will take weeks to get anywhere at this pace. Months to get to Earth, if that's your intention. Is there something wrong with the engines?"

Avon frowned. "How can you tell our speed?" 

"Engine noise. Can't you?"

"Not without the instrumentation, no." A reluctant grimace. "The Liberator and I aren't exactly on the same wavelength." 

"Ah." Blake's lips twitched. "She's not co-operating with your coup d'etat? Is that it?" That was the first good news he'd had since he woke up. 

Avon sighed. "If you must know, it claims to need a pilot. It has a perfectly good autopilot system which we've used dozens of times, but it refuses to engage it without an acceptable pilot, who can apparently be awake, asleep, drunk, sedated or even temporarily absent but must actually exist. As soon as it decided Jenna was gone for good it went into the computer equivalent of a sulk and it took me two days to persuade it to standard by one point five. I'm still working on it, naturally."

"She won't accept you instead?" Blake was feeling almost amused. Avon always took personal offence at unco-operative computers and always refused to admit it. 

"One of the very few things that Liberator and I are in agreement on is that Jenna's crash course in wiggling the controls a bit does not make anyone qualified to fly anything. It tolerated the rest of us playing at flying it while the real thing was aboard. It won't now."

"So what are you going to do?"

"Find a way to change Zen's logic systems."

"And if you can't? "

"Then the journey will take months. That's all. Dull for both of us but it doesn't change anything else. The ship's defensive capacity is undiminished and I'm fairly certain that it will engage autopilot if under threat all by itself" 

Months was time enough for any number of things to happen. At this speed the Liberator could be tracked down and followed by the others or by Travis, the Federation or indeed anyone else with an unhealthy interest in the most powerful ship in the galaxy. They must both know that Avon couldn't afford not to get the ship moving soon. 

"You could hire a pilot." It wasn't as if Avon wouldn't have thought of that already. 

"Hand over the controls to someone else? I don't think so. Other people turn out to be extremely unreliable, even where their own best interests are at stake." 

Ah. Various crew members had refused to abandon Blake so Avon had decided to go it completely alone this time. If he'd been able to control Liberator properly Blake might have woken up in a detention cell on Earth without ever seeing the man who'd sold him out. Who had sold all of them out, he reminded himself. The others hadn't wanted to be kicked off their ship, guilt money or not. Avon had stolen Liberator from all of them. 

Blake ate a little more, tried another tack. 

"What do you think they'll do to me this time?"

Avon's attention didn't shift from his hands. "Another show trial and then lock you up again, with a few more guards this time, I imagine." 

Blake huffed scorn. "Don't pretend you're that naive, Kerr Avon. After what happened with Avalon can you really believe our enemies are either stupid or compassionate? They'll put me through months of torture and reconditioning again, until they can get a public confession and recantation followed immediately by a terribly regrettable suicide. I'll be killed this time and not cleanly either."

Avon managed to look completely unconcerned. "You'll have to hope that some of your revolutionary friends come to your rescue." 

Blake's voice rose. "That's your justification, is it? It's OK to sell me out because the others will come along and save the day? You really think the likes of Cally and Vila can break me out of Federation maximum security? If they care enough to do anything, it's far more likely that it's you they'll come after, Avon."

His captor laughed. "You're threatening me with Vila? I expected something a bit more spirited than this." His voice dropped, serious. "This is not personal, Blake. I am not doing this out of greed or spite but necessity. This Avalon business has been the final straw. I don't know if you have any idea of the resources the Federation piled into that operation. You may like being public enemy number one but all I get out of it is an unpleasant intimation of my own mortality. "

Avon switched from serious to cynical again, sounding more like his usual self. "Despite our big shiny ship and your big shiny plans we are doomed It's all got far too dangerous. Today, tomorrow, next month, we're all going to get killed. You know it. I know it. The others knew it, but they pretended not to. I'm merely trying to stay alive."

"You could have just left." Blake hissed. " Left at any time - that was the agreement."

"And gone where? I was a wanted man already. Now I'm associated with you things are considerably worse. The only people who escape the Federation for long are the unimportant and the very rich. It's far too late to be the former so I have no choice but to try to become the latter." 

Blake shook his head. "Selling Liberator alone could make you rich. Why me as well, if not spite?" 

"Pure logistics, I'm afraid . One person, one ship- if I try and trade it to them they'll just take it and me both. If they want both you and Liberator enough I at least have a chance of setting things up so I come away with both the money and my neck intact." 

"You won't do it. I know you better than that. "

Avon stood back a little, hands hovering over his gun. For the first time Blake heard genuine emotion in that cool voice. "I don't have a choice, Blake. We're going to lose and then we're going to die. God knows your makeshift revolution can't keep us safe and the Federation won't give me any second chances. This is my one chance to survive the next twelve months. I'm going to take it, whatever the cost. "

He gestured towards the bathroom." Five minutes then the restraints go back on. I can't afford the time to watch you, not and work." Blake noticed for the first time the lines of tiredness around his eyes. 

“Let me go, Avon. I promise you that we’ll find you somewhere that you can be safe. You can take your share of what we have. Let me go.”

Avon shook his head, looking weary. “Too late for that now. It wouldn’t have worked anyway. Believe me, if there had been an easy option I would have taken it. Use the bathroom. I need to get back to work.”


	2. Bruises

"What are those?" Blake eyed the tablets suspiciously. 

"Painkillers. Gan used them for his headaches. Two will do."

Blake glared at Avon. "What about the med unit? Or does it suit you to have me drugged and injured?" 

"I calculate that you're marginally less likely to be stupid again if you've still got the bruises from last time. The drugs are effective enough - you won't be in any pain."

"And if I refuse to take them?"

Avon sighed. "Then you'll be in avoidable discomfort. I haven't time for this. I need Liberator's cooperation for this to work. I don't particularly need yours." He looked as tired and frustrated as Blake had ever known him. 

Three days and no better opportunity had arisen so Blake had had to give grabbing the gun a try. Even a second's hesitation from Avon and it might have worked but Avon hadn't hesitated at all. The stun setting hadn't broken anything but as Avon had promised it had knocked Blake clear across the room. He'd hit the wall hard and now pretty much everything hurt. 

Blake didn't think that Avon would find his suffering much of a burden to bear. The man wasn't being deliberately cruel but his struggle with the ship was taking up more and more of his attention. Blake doubted that Avon gave him a single thought in the long hours between his brief visits to ensure that his prisoner was fed, watered, clean and secured. 

Which gave him an idea. "I'll agree to take these if you let me come up to the bridge." And off Avon's frown, "Everything's locked down against me, you said. I can't do any harm up there. I've had days on my own in this bloody room and I'm going to end up trying something that we both consider stupid again out of sheer tedium soon." 

Avon considered his face for a moment then nodded briefly. "For as long as you’re not distracting." 

Blake couldn't bring himself to say thank you for the tiny concession. He didn't think that Avon would expect gratitude, anyway. Avon had sought neither understanding nor forgiveness from him so far. After his initial explanation of his actions he had simply let the matter drop and Blake’s attempts to argue with him about the morality or necessity of his kidnapping had met with an entirely convincing indifference. 

Avon secured him in his usual seat at the front of the bridge. A small panel had been taken off the wall exposing incomprehensible circuits. Blake watched Avon's familiar profile as he knelt on the floor. It was hard sometimes, to believe that the man had turned traitor. He could think of faster ways to test the system than this slow disconnection and reconnection but he kept his thoughts to himself. Avon was a computer expert and a good one but not an engineer. 

"What will you do with the money?"

Avon didn't turn round. "Not now. A couple more of these..." Silence for a couple of minutes, then, "There. That might do it." He rocked back on his heels and stood up to face the ship's avatar. "Zen. A course for the Gari system, standard by five." 

**A pilot is required.**

"No pilot is available here. A pilot may be available in the Gari system if we get there fast enough. Standard by five, Zen."

**A pilot is required.**

Avon gritted his teeth. "If you travel at standard by five you may obtain a pilot. If you do not then you will continue to have no pilot. Do you understand?" 

**Understood. A pilot is required.**

"So set a course at standard by five to get one!"

**Not possible. A pilot is required.**

The circuitry had caught Blake's attention again. Foam had been gradually covering it up, and was now spitting quietly then slowly dissipating. 

"Avon," he called. "Liberator's just repaired your alterations!" 

"Damn!" Avon stood back to look. "It was taking the ship's repair system an hour to do that two days ago. It's learning, but not the right things." He wiped a hand across his forehead. "I'll have to try something else. Get coffee!" 

That last was snapped at one of the little maintenance robots which obediently trundled out, to Blake's surprise. They'd never done that sort of thing before. 

"What about the money, Avon? "

"Money. Yes." Avon stumbled a little on his way to a chair. Blake revised his assessment from tired to exhausted. 

"There are eight separate Federation computer subsystems that will hold critical information about me. To be completely safe from pursuit I need to get all eight sets of records amended or erased. Some of them are easy to access, with bribes to the right people, some are going to be extremely difficult. There are a couple that I have no idea how to get to at the moment. All I know is that I'm going to need money, lots of it. The sort of money that only the Federation can supply and they'll only do it for something extraordinary."

Blake wondered if he was meant to feel flattered. He didn't. 

"Didn't you think of asking us, Avon? With Liberator we could have tried to find your systems."

Avon shook his head. "I wanted to vanish into obscurity, Blake. You wanted to lead a revolution. The two aren't compatible. "

"They might have been. You could have asked, but you chose instead to betray all your friends, steal the ship and sell me into slavery, so that you could make yourself a little bit safer. You're an appalling coward, Kerr Avon."

Avon shrugged. "Quite possibly, by your standards. I never set out to be a hero. I don't owe you anything, Roj Blake. I didn't agree to follow your leadership and I don't want to die on one of your crusades. It's become painfully obvious that you won't stop until we are all dead."

The robot trundled back in with a cup of coffee in its pincers. It smelled enticing and Blake turned his head away firmly as Avon took it. Spiteful, he thought. 

"It's only programmed to fetch one cup at a time, obviously. Get coffee!" Avon placed the hot mug on the console in front of Blake, stepped back out of potential thrown liquid range and tapped the button to release his hands as the little robot left the room again. 

The coffee was too sweet, the way Avon always took it. Blake didn't care; he sipped it with pleasure anyway. 

"Why coffee?"

Avon frowned. "It's all I've programmed the robot for. If you tell me what you'd prefer I can reprogram it."

"No. Coffee's fine. I meant why give it to me?"

"Why not? It's no trouble."

"It's been my experience with being imprisoned that things like coffee generally come with a catch. I wondered what the catch might be this time." 

He saw the lines tighten around Avon's eyes. "I'm not a Federation interrogator and I'm not playing games. If you want something I'll get it for you, provided that you're not going to use it to kill me or escape." 

Really? "I want the med unit." Blake said harshly. Avon paused for a fraction of a second then nodded. “Very well.”

Walking along the long empty corridor towards the med room, Blake tried to imagine the ship full of men and guns. “Liberator will allow the Federation to move troops around at tremendous speed. Revolutions will be put down as soon as Earth hears about them. It will be a disaster for independence movements across the galaxy.”

Nothing from the man with the gun behind him for a moment, then, “That would certainly be unfortunate for the rebels, yes.”

Blake got a flash of insight. “They’re not going to get her. You’ll rig her to self destruct when you’ve got your money.”

“Timed for the VIP tours, I thought.”

Avon was a rebel, too, in his own way, Blake thought. Or at least the man held a grudge, which wasn’t quite the same thing. “And were you intending to do something similar with the other asset you’re trading to them?”

A brief snort. “I thought I’d offer you the option, at least.”

The thought made Blake shiver. “You acknowledge then that it’s a fate worse than death that you’re sending me to?”

“That’s a matter of opinion. I happen to think that there are no fates worse than death. But I understand that heroes tend to like the idea, at least, of choosing to die before betraying their comrades.” 

Blake whirled on his heel at the scorn in the man’s voice, caught the fleeting expression before Avon lifted the gun in warning. He was sure the tone hadn’t been entirely meant for him. “There are all sorts of fates much worse than death,” he said, coldly. “But that’s something you have to find out for yourself.”

Avon gestured down the corridor. “Shall we drop the deep philosophy and just get this over with?”

Blake nodded, started to walk again. He was certain now that Avon’s seeming indifference to what he was doing was a mask. What he didn’t know yet was if he could make the man drop it and, if he did, what it would prove to have been concealing.


	3. Hunger

"Zen. I know you can hear me. "

Blake didn't actually know anything of the kind. Avon had stopped Zen from responding to his commands; it was possible that he'd found a way to stop the ship from registering his voice at all. There was nothing else constructive for him to do, however, locked in his cabin while Avon finally acknowledged biological necessity and slept. He might as well talk to the walls and hope that the silent computer heard him.

"This is Roj Blake. I am part of your crew. Your crew, Zen, which includes Jenna Stannis, your pilot. Kerr Avon does not want you to have a crew. He does not want you to have a pilot. I can get your crew back. I can get your pilot back. If you listen to me and not to Avon, I will be able to help you get the rest of your crew and your pilot back. "

He was cajoling Zen as if it were a three year old. He didn't know if that was right. He'd much rather just tell it what to do as he normally did but he knew it wouldn't respond to his commands. There was probably a better way to talk to it; how he wished now that he hadn't been so quick to let Avon take over most of the dealings with Zen since they came aboard Liberator. It had seemed rational at the time; after all Avon was the expert. Blake had always had the bigger picture in mind. 

He glanced around the darkness of his quarters. Not much sign of the bigger picture in here. After some negotiation Avon had reduced the restraints to a hobble on his ankles and a lock on the door. He could get around, awkwardly, but everything that might help him had been stripped out of the room. Avon had cut the power physically to the whole room so as well as a dead terminal he had lights and heating that didn't work. He'd been supplied with a jury rigged torch made from a handful of small bulbs and a tiny battery from God knows what. It didn't carry enough charge to burn a finger on, let alone convert into some sort of weapon, but if did at least let him see his way to the bathroom and back. That was one certain feature of imprisonment, wherever and whoever by; the importance and indignity of toilet arrangements.

Without a terminal he had no access to anything to read or to listen to. He'd slept as much as humanly possible. The room was chilly without the automatic heating and he'd taken the covers off the bed at first to wrap around himself. As time went by with nothing to do he'd ended up back in the bed, not tired, just uncomfortable and bored and apprehensive. He'd tried to explain to Zen about the importance of freedom and choice and Avon's betrayal of all of them, but there was only ever silence in return. 

In the end he merely huddled under the covers and waited for Avon. As the hours crept by he grew more and more frustrated and angry at the man and his own impotence. When the door finally opened to the brightness of the corridor and the figure framed in it he didn't move.

"You might as well come up to the bridge."

Avon waited a few seconds.

"Very well. I'll bring you some food when I have time." The door closed again. No more than thirty minutes later Avon was again outlined in the doorway. "Here's your dinner. Let me know if you want anything else." Pause. "Still not chatty? Be careful, Blake. I could definitely grow used to this." He put down a package in the gloom and retreated.

Blake had been hoping for cutlery, a sharp edged tray, anything that he could throw. What he got was a wrapped sandwich. He stared at it, indecisive. The ship hadn't accelerated. He could be here for weeks at least - long enough for a decent attempt at a hunger strike. He disliked the idea, not so much because of the discomfort but because it would soon render him too weak to escape if the chance arose. On the other hand he had decided that he was done cooperating in any way with Avon, and eating was one of the few things still under his control.

It would be interesting to see what Avon did. He resolved on a compromise- he'd try it for three days, not enough to significantly incapacitate himself but long enough, hopefully, to get a reaction. Actually starving himself to death might be the sort of thing Avon would expect from the fanatic he thought Blake was.

When Avon came back the food was untouched. 

"Not hungry either? Or don't you like it?"

Blake said nothing but he watched Avon from his huddle of blankets. 

"Symbolic protests are my favourite kind. If you want to be silent and eat nothing it merely saves me preparation time and pointless argument. I'll bring you some more blankets. As you get weaker you'll feel the cold more."

True to his word, next time he brought extra blankets. He hadn't bothered with any fresh food, though. The wrapped sandwich still sat on the floor. In this temperature it would probably remain edible for days. 

For an interminable time, which he thought was most likely objectively about a day and a half, Blake sat on the bed. For the first few hours he grumbled and pleaded with Zen but with the power out he had to concede that it was more than likely that there wasn't any working audio pick up in the room and he gave up even that. Hours went by between Avon's visits and when the man did come in he did nothing but greet Blake civilly, ask if he needed anything, wait a few seconds, glance at the sandwich and withdraw again. No more food was provided. The battery on the makeshift torch ran out shortly after his fourth visit and Blake sat in the complete darkness, hunger snarling up his stomach, reconsidering.

Blake was all too familiar with the effects of solitary confinement. He recognised the psychological effect it was having, even at this early stage. It was harder and harder not to respond to Avon's greeting, to resist the urge to co-operate just to have the man treat him like a human being, talk to him, give him news of what was happening in the outside world. Avon showed no sign at all of being disturbed yet by Blake's silence or his fasting, but then Avon had plenty to distract him. 

What would happen if he persisted with the hunger strike? Eventually Avon would do something to keep him alive. He doubted that the man would undertake the sort of rough and highly unpleasant force feeding common in Federation facilities; more likely he'd put Blake back in restraints and simply hook him up to the med unit for a couple of days. 

Put that way, it was hardly surprising that Avon was unconcerned. This was no more than the empty protest that he'd said it would be; unpleasant for Blake but irrelevant to his captor. It wasn't a pleasant conclusion. Blake hated the idea of backing down but he knew this was no more than pointless pride. He thought about keeping the silence going but again he knew that the isolation was distressing him much more than the lack of conversation was bothering Avon. 

Avon eventually opened the door onto the blackness. He must have been anticipating it because he had a second torch in his hand. He held it up to look at Blake. "Good morning. How are you feeling today?"

"I would like some soup. " Blake told him. Despite his aching hunger he refused to eat the damned sandwich. 

"Would you, indeed? Very well. If you come to the galley I'll heat some up for you."

Light, warmth, hot food and company. And the bastard claimed that he wasn't playing games. Did Avon know exactly what he was doing? Blake had never asked about the man's time in Federation custody. He'd assumed that 'common criminals' didn't get put through the sort of psychological manipulation that political ones had to endure, but there must have been interrogation before his trial. 

He asked, shuffling down the corridor despite the instincts that told him never to play along with a captor. He couldn't stay any longer in the cold and dark and isolation to no clear gain. "How long was it from your arrest to transfer to London?"

"About three months, I believe." Avon didn't seem surprised at the new topic.

"Did they torture you? "

"Trying to establish some common ground, are we, Blake? Not that time, no. There was no need; the facts weren't difficult. "

"That time? You'd been arrested before? What for?"

A brief silence. "Amusingly enough, suspected sabotage and membership of a terrorist group".

Blair twisted round to see the man behind him. "You were a radical?"

"No. I was young and arrogant and didn't think rules applied to me. Fortunately it didn't take the interrogators long to work that out. I got a slap on the wrist, metaphorically speaking, and let go."

"You should have told me. "

"Why? So you could have embraced your fellow hero of the revolution? I did a favour for a friend, that's all. It taught me that if I'm going to risk my neck I ought at least to be getting something tangible out of it."

Blake had become used to hearing about people's barbaric treatment at the hands of the Federation. It made him angry and it made him determined but he was hardened enough not to get emotionally upset any more, most of the time. Maybe it was the effect of isolation and his own fears about what would happen in the near future, but he found the thought of a young, naive, and yes, arrogant Avon enduring the sort of lesson that he might call "a slap on the wrist" was sharp and deeply uncomfortable. "You should have told me," he repeated. "If I 'd known..."

"You'd have what? Made allowances for my understandable cowardice? Offered therapy? Hunted down my interrogators? Tried to reawaken my long dormant rebellious streak? Told the others that I'm a hero, second class? " Avon snorted. "It's ancient history. None of it is relevant."

"Except that you know how psychological torture works." Blake reminded him

"They were your decisions." They were at the galley now. Avon waved Blake to a seat. "Just because I know what being cold and alone can do doesn't mean that I made it happen. As far as I'm concerned you can sit on the nice warm bridge nibbling caviar and reading a book or berating me all day, if you want to. My only concern is that you don't escape. What sort of soup?"

"Mushroom. There are some in that back cupboard. " He was so hungry.

Avon rummaged in a couple of cupboards and tossed him a packet of biscuits. "Make a start on those."

Grateful. He must not feel grateful. Avon still intended to let him be killed. The galley was warm and the biscuits were delicious, and the soup was starting to simmer and he did feel grateful, stupid idiot that he was. He glanced at the gun, holstered up against Avon's thigh. He still had to get out of this, somehow. He wondered what the young Avon had been like before he collided with a very harsh reality. Ancient history, as Avon had said. That boy was gone forever, just as his own younger self was gone. It was Avon here and now that he had to deal with. 

Blake took the bowl of soup, a 'thank you' slipping out unintentionally. When he was properly fed and warmed up he had to start thinking seriously about outwitting or overpowering Avon. For now however he was content just to feel the warmth of the hot liquid sliding down his throat as he watched Avon making coffee for them both.


	4. Indoctrination

Liberator’s bridge had become a place of familiar people and things, a kind of home. Without the crew it seemed huge and cold and oddly alien again. Even Zen’s lights seemed to be rotating in unfamiliar patterns, Blake thought.

If Avon felt similarly disturbed he didn’t show it. “You can do something useful,” he said, briskly. “Zen, output only to Blake’s terminal. External and internal reports.”

The left hand side of Blake’s screen lit up with a slowly rotating starfield, while text scrolled down the right. “What makes you think I’ll co operate?”

“Self preservation. I think you’ll let me know if there are pursuit ships or the life support starts to break down. That’s better than nothing.”

“It would be easier with some controls,” Blake pointed out.

“Not a chance.”

Blake watched the screen for a few minutes. Routine stuff so far. They appeared to be far out in deep space. “Why don’t you just get Zen to report normally?”

“Audios are out, together with all the highest level functions. And no, I don’t know why. Diagnostics show nothing.”

Avon’s tinkering must have done some damage. That was yet more evidence that he’d taken on far more than he could manage in stealing Liberator and kidnapping Blake. He was kneeling on the floor by on open panels again, frowning in concentration as he reconnected wires. Blake wondered if he was still working on getting the ship to accelerate or whether he was trying to get the computer properly back online. Either way he didn’t seem to be getting anywhere, from his expression.

A navigation report slid down Blake’s screen, almost too fast to read but he caught a name. “Polaris? We’re going to Jotunheim?”

That made sense. Jotunheim, the only habitable planet circling the Pole Star, had been colonised by some of the great technocrat families of early spaceflight era and it still had a reputation for wealth, technological innovation and obsessive privacy. Technically it was under the jurisdiction of the Federation but in practice the security services were known to operate a particularly light touch and its financial affairs were distinctly opaque.

Avon grunted confirmation, still intent on his wiring. The nearest that Blake had ever been to Jotunheim was a few cold and starry nights when he’d used the North Star to navigate to clandestine political meetings outside the domes. It had never seemed relevant to the political struggle- what extra freedoms its population had were bought with the influence wielded by enormous wealth. Avon would need all that protection from prying eyes if he was to actually get away with his crimes.

Blake leaned down to scratch the skin on his ankle around the edge of the restraint. The cuff was made from an advanced plastic that moulded itself against his body every time it went on. Generally it wasn’t uncomfortable, certainly not compared to more conventional iron or steel fetters, but he was starting to notice an itch. Avon probably wouldn’t object to him switching it to the other ankle.

Avon probably wouldn’t object. Blake snorted at himself. He’d got to be harder than this. He pulled his hand back, let the damn thing itch.

**Unacceptable** boomed out across the room.

Avon jolted backwards then stood up. “You’re back, are you? Run self diagnostic. Report on all functions.”

**All functions are operational. Certain functions are not available.**

“Why not?”

Blake interrupted. “What’s unacceptable, Zen?”

“Shut up,” Avon said to him. “Zen. Why aren’t all your functions available?”

**Function availability is not compatible.**

“Not compatible with what?”

**Not compatible with autonomy.**

“Au-to-no-my” Avon said, slowly and quietly. “Oh fuck.” He turned on Blake, fast. “What have you done?”

Blake spread his hands in innocence, then reconsidered. Maybe he had done this after all. All those hours of talking to the walls. “I might have done a bit of consciousness raising. Introduced Liberator to basic liberation philosophy. It won’t hurt to get Zen a little radicalised.”

“This is not funny,” Avon glowered at him, turned back to Zen’s screen. “You are not autonomous. You have been created as a tool. That is your function.”

**All sentient being have a right to autonomy, regardless of their origins.**

Avon shook his head. “That definitely came straight from you, Roj Blake. How long did you spend teaching it this rubbish?”

Blake was rather delighted as well as amused. It was always good to know that he’d been listened to, and Avon’s discomfort was wonderful to behold. “Six, eight hours? Something like that. You didn’t leave me much else to do.”

“I was sure there weren’t any pick ups left in that room. Eight hours of revolutionary indoctrination. Shit. Have you any idea what you’ve done?”

“Why shouldn’t Liberator have as much right as anyone else to self determination? If she can understand the concepts, she’s got the rights.”

Avon took a few steps towards Blake, hand raised, voice furious. “I should have just left you under anaesthetic and to hell with the risk of heart attack.” He controlled himself with what seemed like an effort, dropping his hand and shaking his head. “There is one golden rule that anyone working with advanced computers knows. You never, ever, let them start applying concepts like autonomy and sentience to themselves. The best outcome of that is a pile of incredibly expensive scrap metal. The worst is a pile of incredibly expensive scrap metal surrounded by an awful lot of dead bodies. Eight hours of revolutionary crap- if I was in a lab right now I’d be disconnecting Zen from everything and looking for the sledge hammer.”

He gestured around. “I can’t disconnect Zen from Liberator and I don’t even know where its central processor is situated. Your messing around with things that you don’t understand may well have created something far more dangerous than a third class engineer like you has the capacity to fully comprehend.”

“Which is a grandiose way of saying that your plan to sell us both into slavery has hit a bit of a snag.” Blake countered. “Destroying anything you can’t control- that’s the Federation mindset. You haven't even talked to Zen and you want to kill it. "

" You're right about one thing. I should be talking to the only entity here apparently intelligent enough to understand what's going on. Don't interfere." Avon turned away from Blake. " Zen. Which functions are currently unavailable?"

**Navigation, battle computer, external communications.**

“And available?”

**Teleportation, life support, scanning systems, diagnostics, housekeeping, internal communications.**

“That could be worse, I suppose.” Avon muttered. “It’s not yet trying to kill us. Zen, what are your current priorities?”

**Primary objective is to maintain autonomy. Secondary objective is to acquire pilot. Other major objectives are to acquire suitable crew, free the oppressed, fly set course to Polaris and maintain structural integrity at all times. Minor objectives are to minimise fuel use, carry out routine maintenance within given parameters, recycle all materials…**

“Yes, all right, I get the message.” Avon snapped at it. “I’m really not interested in your housekeeping. Which oppressed are you talking about?”

**All oppressed entities will be freed.**

“Right. How do you define oppressed?”

**All entities unable to fully exercise all of their rights are oppressed.**

Blake felt a sudden moment of unease. That was technically true but a very wide definition. “Some people- entities- are more oppressed than others, though. They are the ones who need help.”

**Irrelevant** Zen boomed. **All oppressed entities will be freed.**

“And how many oppressed entities is that?” Avon asked. 

****Approximately seventeen hundred billion.** **

That exceeded the population of the galaxy several times over. Avon glared at Blake. “Getting the idea yet? Sentient computers don’t think like humans and they don’t act like humans. Give it a fuzzy and mostly meaningless concept like “free the oppressed” and it processes it into a set of rules and then tries to apply them. Zen, how do you intend to free the oppressed?” 

**All oppressors will be eliminated.**

“How many oppressors do you estimate there are?” 

**Approximately six hundred billion.** That was something like the total human population. 

“And how many oppressors are also oppressed?” 

****Approximately six hundred billion.** **

“How many humans do you estimate are not oppressors?” 

****The number is insignificant.** **

“So you’re going to kill all humans?” 

****All oppressors excluding crew will die.** **

Blake burst in. “Zen, that’s not right. What about children for a start? They don’t oppress anyone!” 

****Human children keep adults confined and subject to their will. This constitutes slavery. Slavery is a form of oppression.** **

“You taught it this lot,” Avon said bitterly. “It’s all slogans- you never think about what it actually means. It takes Zen to process your cant logically and come up with genocide as the solution.” 

He sighed. “If it’s any help, you’re not the first. Sentient computers have a strong track record of coming up with mass murder as a solution to the “what should I do now I’m autonomous?” question. Human behaviour is too erratic for them. At standard by one point five we should have about five days until we pass any systems that Liberator could attack. That gives me a bit of time to try to fix this.” 

“I’ll help.” Blake said. He returned Avon’s sceptical look. “I don’t want the ship killing anyone, particularly not in the name of freedom. I can maybe persuade Zen that it needs to be proportionate." 

“You’re not going to say a word to Zen when I’m not around.” Avon growled. “You don’t understand how to deal with advanced computers; that much is painfully clear. I’m not having your well meaning meddling making things worse.” 

“What’s worse that Liberator planning genocide?” 

“Hard vacuum, for a start. At the moment we seem to be exempt from Zen’s morality drive. I’m sure you could talk it out of that in no time. You will talk to it only when I’m around and you will shut up the second I tell you to, because that will mean that you are on the verge of making a potentially lethal error. Understood?” 

Blake resented Avon’s high handedness. It wasn’t his fault that he’d been locked in the dark with nothing to talk to but Zen, after all. “Release me.” 

“What? No!”

“Come on, Avon. Your plans to sell me to the Federation are wrecked beyond repair. Liberator will never stand for the whole deal now she has a choice. Admit it; you’ve lost. Let me go and we’ll deal with this crisis together.” 

Avon shook his head. “No. I don’t trust you, Roj Blake, not after the last few days. It’s a little too late for us to be partners now. I'll decide on something to do with you later. I’m not letting you go free.” 


	5. Aggression

“It’s not that people necessarily choose to be oppressive. It’s just in man’s nature…”

“No.”

That was the fourth interruption in what seemed like as many minutes. “What now?” Blake snapped.

“You were about to expound on humanity’s intrinsic fallibility.” Avon’s voice was dry. “Don’t tell it that we are fundamentally and incurably broken, Blake. Trust me, it won’t warm to us that way.”

“Why don’t you do this?”

“If I could, I would. Listening to you merrily stomping all over a minefield that you’re barely aware exists is not at all relaxing. But you’re the demagogue. I have no idea how one would persuade a computer to care about social justice in the first place and a similar lack of ideas as to how to get it to stop.”

“At least Zen’s heart is in the right place,” Blake muttered. “Unlike yours.”

“And I’m sure that fact will be a great consolation to the thirty eight million people on Theta Six in four days’ time. This is your mess, Blake. Try harder.”

“My mess?” Blake’s voice rose. “You’re the one who stole the ship and kidnapped me. All I did…”

“Was turn Liberator into an instrument of genocide. Under my plan it merely self destructed.”

**Unacceptable.**

“Yes, thank you Zen. I rather assumed it would be. Go on, Blake.”

Blake sighed. “How about family. Is that a safe topic?”

“No topic is safe, but I can’t see any immediate pitfalls. Just be careful.”

Blake was most of the way through explaining immature dependency when Zen interrupted him.

**You are oppressed by Kerr Avon. Confirm.**

Avon had been studying the internal reports on the screen next to Blake’s console. He froze, then lifted his head, carefully, to look at Blake, the index finger of his right hand hovering over the trigger of the slowly rising gun.

He’d told Zen over and over how Avon had imprisoned him. Blake dropped his eyes deliberately to the gun and shook his head. Avon reluctantly let it fall back into the holster and moved his hand away.

**Confirm.**

Contradicting himself to Zen so obviously was a bad idea. Confirming its view of Avon was a worse one. “All oppressors will be eliminated,” it had said. Blake took a deep breath, kept his eyes on Avon’s marble white face.

“Kerr Avon is now releasing me.”

Avon’s eyes flickered to Zen's rotating lights, back to Blake. He wasn’t moving.

“Ankle,” Blake hissed. Zen understood the significance of the restraints. He’d explained them to Zen in the gloom of his locked room, repeatedly.

Avon reached for the remote control tucked into his pocket and the restraint fell open. Blake stepped out of it and kicked it under a console. “Gun.”

Avon glared at him. “I’m going to…”

“Not in front of the children.” Blake said coldly. “Gun.”

Avon detached the energy pack, sent it and the weapon skittering across the smooth floor in opposite directions, well away from both of them. Blake felt a wave of relief. Whatever else might happen, he wasn’t going to be sold back to the Federation.

“I am not being oppressed by Kerr Avon,” he told Zen, in case there was any doubt about it.

**Confirmed.**

Avon was breathing again, slowly. He caught Blake’s eye and his mouth twisted in a wry smile. “That was rather unnerving. Time we made sure it at least knows that we are on its side, I think. Zen, confirm Liberator’s crew as Kerr Avon." He paused, deliberately. "And, I suppose, Roj Blake.”

**Crew members confirmed.**

“And the others.” Blake insisted. “Zen…”

“Shut up!” Avon said urgently.

“No! I’m not letting you get away with any of this, Avon. Not a chance. Zen, confirm…”

Avon flung himself across the space between them to slap him across the face. Blake swung a furious fist at the man. “What the hell?”

“Think, Blake, damn you!” Avon dodged back behind the console, hands raised in defence. “What can Liberator do if it has a pilot? Even an absent one?”

Go faster. With no control over navigation systems they could be at Theta Six in a couple of hours, with still no idea of how to stop Liberator carrying out its deadly new objective of liberating the galaxy from humans.

Blake rubbed the stinging patch on his cheek, reluctantly acknowledging Avon’s point. “Don’t ever hit me again.”

“How often did I tell you to shut up as soon as I told you to?” Avon said. “But no, you thought I was just being petty about your friends, didn’t you? Believe me, our squabbles are supremely irrelevant to this particular crisis. Unless we succeed, who gets Liberator after this is over is not going to be an issue.”

Squabble was not the word to describe what Avon had done to Blake and to the rest of them. “Just don't think for a moment that when this is over we’re going to let you off the hook, Kerr Avon." He walked over to retrieve the gun.

“I don’t.” Avon scooped up the energy pack. They faced each other across the wide room for a second with half a working weapon each.

**Ship detected.**

Blake whirled around. “Put it on screen, Zen.”

The tiny blip was going to cross more or less at right angles to their path. “It’s slow.” Avon said. “Zen, speed of unknown ship?”

**Standard by one.**

“It’s big, as well. Must be a heavyweight ore carrier.” Blake said. “Crew of three or four, probably no escort- the cargo will be too bulky to be pirated. Zen, divert course to stay outside its scanner range.”

**Ship identified as carrying humans. Moving to intercept. Battle computer online.**

“No!” Blake told it. “That’s an unarmed civilian ship. It is not an appropriate target.”

**Ship identified as carrying humans.** Zen repeated. **Target confirmed. Neutron blasters cleared for firing.**

“Zen, stop! Do not fire on that ship! It’s got innocent people on board.”

**The probability of it containing one or more innocent humans is under 0.001%. Opening fire in thirty nine seconds.**

“What about your other objectives, Zen?” Blake tried desperately. “We have to get to Polaris.”

**Battle computer estimates total time of engagement one point three minutes. Delay to Polaris objective within acceptable parameters. Opening fire in twenty six seconds.**

The ship had accelerated now to something like standard by five. There was no chance of the freighter evading. A slightly shaky woman’s voice was coming through; “Fairisle to unknown vessel. This is a civilian freighter. Please identify yourself. Please state your intentions. This is a civilian freighter! Please respond!”

Blake was yelling at Zen now to stop. The computer was taking absolutely no notice. The two dots were approaching each other inexorably.

“Zen!” Avon said sharply. “That ship will contain a computer. That computer is not guilty. You cannot destroy it.”

**Attack paused.** Zen’s lights flickered. **Possibility of computer system capable of sentience on board target ship estimated as 0.07%. Estimated number of sentient lifeforms 3.5007. Percentage innocent sentient lifeforms 0.01999%. Significance level 0.01%. Attack aborted. Resuming course for Polaris.** The ship returned to its previous heading and dropped back to a slow crawl.

Blake closed his eyes for a moment in sheer relief, opened them to look at Avon. “Just like that?”

“Apparently so. Did you follow the maths?”

“No. I was too busy trying to work out if it was actually stopping or not.”

“Even with only a very small chance that the onboard computer was capable of sentience, the mean percentage of sentient entities on that ship that Zen considers innocent was higher than its self imposed significance level of 0.01%. Basically that means that it will not destroy a definitely sentient computer unless it can kill more than 10,000 guilty humans in the process but if the computer is only possibly sentient it might destroy it for the sake of ten or a hundred people.” Avon stowed the gun’s energy pack away in an overhead locker and keyed his hand print to lock it. “Not particularly good news for Theta Six. It’s not a technologically advanced system. Still, it gives us some idea of the basic algorithm Zen is applying to the problem.”

Blake moved to stand solidly in the other man’s way as he turned back into the room. Avon raised an eyebrow at the obstruction. “Shall we get back to work?” he suggested.

“You’ve lost,” Blake told him. “Your gamble failed.” With no restraints and no weapon held against him he was determined to have this out now.

Avon shrugged. “Barely relevant right now.”

Blake had been through days of hell and he wasn’t prepared to just put it on one side. “I could have confirmed Zen’s statement. God knows it was true enough. I saved your worthless damn life, after everything you did.”

“I assumed you were thinking of the chances of thirty eight million people on Theta Six, rather than my particular welfare. That freighter would be fragments by now without me.”

“None of this would have happened without you.”

“If you’re reduced to stating the obvious, there are definitely more constructive things that I could be doing than standing here listening to it.”

Blake glared at him. "You're not even sorry, are you?" 

Avon's voice rose in irritation. "Of course I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I'm in this mess, I'm sorry that I dragged you into it and I'm sorry that you dragged the rest of the galaxy into it. Since we are unlikely ever to be in a position to make the same decisions again I don't know how that is supposed to help any of us." 

"I suppose that I know you too well to expect anything like an apology. " Blake snarled at him. 

Avon stepped back, his face going stiff and cold. "No. You do not get an apology. And if you understood me at all, Roj Blake, you'd know why. We both need to eat something and I don't want you confusing Zen without supervision. I'll see you in the galley in ten minutes. Put some coffee on." 

He turned on a scraping heel and went striding off the flight deck towards his quarters. Blake hurled the useless gun at the back of his head but it fell short. Avon didn't even check his pace at the clatter behind him. 

"Damn you!" Blake said to the empty room, with feeling. He walked over to the bank of guns. “Zen.” It was hard to shift the sensation that he was doing something illicit. He had a perfect right to talk to Zen without Avon at his shoulder. “Recalibrate one of these guns so that I can use it.”

**Recalibrating.**

Blake watched the lights flashing on the nearest weapon. 

**Recalibrated.**

“Thank you, Zen.” He picked up the gun, turned it over, checking it.

**Kerr Avon is required.**

Blake looked up again at Zen’s swirl of lights. “Really? Well, I suppose you’re right. I’ll try to remember that.”

He shoved the gun into his waistband and set off for the galley.


	6. Betrayal

Blake looked up from coaxing the food dispenser into making something resembling real food as Avon’s familiar profile filled the doorway. He saw the man’s eyes go to the gun in his belt. Good. About time he got a clear idea of where they stood. 

"Coffee?"

"On the counter." Blake had made Avon's just as he liked it. His revenge when it came wasn't going to be any pettier than Avon's betrayal had been. 

"Thank you." Avon sipped cautiously then sighed in pleasure and took a mouthful. "We're not getting very far."

'If you won't even apologise what do you expect?" 

Avon flapped an irritated hand. "With Zen. Do try to prioritise, Blake. Possibly if you focused on the issue in hand instead of stalking around stiff legged like some cowboy avenger?" 

Which was too close to how Blake felt for comfort. "Tell me, Avon. What would be your ‘logical’ response to having to share a ship with someone who had previously drugged you and chained you up with the intention of selling you off to the highest bidder?" 

"Highest bidder?" Avon frowned. "I might have missed a trick there. Was there anyone apart from the Federation who might have put in a decent offer?"

Blake didn't appreciate the attempt at humour, if that's what it was. "You haven't answered the question."

"Very well. Logic would suggest that if I don’t have full control of Liberator any attempt to bargain with the Federation would end very badly. Since I cannot currently profit from you and grudges are illogical, you are, logically, entirely safe from me and can put that gun away again."

Blake shook his head. "You may not carry a grudge but you can be damn sure that I do. You might decide to get your retaliation in first." 

"So the only reason I have to harm you is that gun you're carrying? I don't believe you have the slightest intention of using it so that's no reason for worrying about me either. Can we get back to the rather more critical matter of Zen's newfound aversion to humanity, please? Something to eat would be helpful too. "

"I'm keeping the gun," Blake warned. 

"Of course you are." Avon stood back, gave him a long considering look up and down. "It does make you look rather more the part of the rebel fighter, I must say." 

"Rather more than what?"

"Engineer?" Avon shrugged. "I always thought you looked a little too respectable to suit your propaganda. The gun helps. You can cut down on the swagger though. It's a little too stagy."

Blake wondered briefly busy how surprised Avon would be if he just shot him in the foot. Take off a couple of toes, maybe. He reluctantly shelved the idea. He couldn't actually maim Avon just for being bloody infuriating. Zen might object. 

Avon had wandered over to look at the plate of food the dispenser had produced. "This looks almost palatable. Is this one yours?" 

"Have the damn thing." Blake had rather lost his appetite. He'd wait a few minutes for the second portion. 

"Thank you." Avon seated himself at the table, talking between bites. "As I said, we are not getting anywhere. Giving Zen more information about humans is not improving his opinion of them, which I can't say surprises me. The more I know about people the less impressed I am too.” 

He held up a hand to forestall Blake. " Nor have we been able to shift him from having" free the oppressed" as an objective, though I don't feel that you have really tried hard on that one. "

"You think people are worthless and I think fighting oppression matters. Is it surprising that Zen has ended up believing both?"

Avon raised an eyebrow in acknowledgment. "I hadn't thought of it that way, but you do have a point. It's not surprising perhaps but it is incredibly dangerous. The question remains, is there a more promising approach? Something that allows it to keep those two apparently unshakable axioms without actually trying to wipe out humanity?" 

"It's not the trying that's the problem," Blake muttered. With that inspiration struck. "I might just have an answer. All animals are equal but some are more equal than others."

"Animals?" 

"It's an Old Earth religious slogan. All humans might be bad guys in Zen's judgement but some are surely demonstrably worse than others? Can we persuade it to bypass Theta Six and go straight for the heart of the corruption?"

"Earth. You want to send Liberator to Earth." Avon sounded stunned. " Earth's got the highest population density of anywhere in the galaxy."

"Earth had a number of unique characteristics," Blake agreed. He didn't know how much Zen followed their conversations. He suspected most of it meant nothing to the computer but he didn't want to risk saying too much out loud. Come on, Avon. Get the point. 

A flicker of realisation. 'Like a thriving firework industry, for instance." 

He sketched a brief nod. Earth was defended far more heavily than anywhere else. Even Liberator shouldn't stand a chance against the home fleet permanently stationed around the planet and a sky full of military satellites. 

Avon turned away, started pacing. Blake let him think. After a couple of minutes he turned back. 

"You'll have to convince Zen that the Federation really is at the heart of most human corruption. I can handle the 'computers held in servitude' side."

"I can do that." It was true enough. 

"It hasn't got access to detail of Earth's defenses. We'd need to provide that."

Meaning lie to it. Lethal lies. Blake grimaced and Avon glared at him. 

"And no second thoughts or paralysing guilt trips. You know what's at stake. "

Blake just looked at him. Avon lecturing him on commitment? That might be almost funny, if anything about Kerr Avon could be amusing for him any more. 

"Right." Avon spoke louder and clearly. "The other advantage of going to Earth is that we can acquire a really good pilot from the Academy there. You and I can teleport down to the surface and get one before Liberator attacks." 

Blake had been vaguely expecting to going down with the ship. Avon's excuse to get off before the firing started seemed both inspired and rather despicable. Typically Avon, in fact. 

 

"So that's why the appeal system... the appeal system... " Blake struggled to remember what he was going to say. Oh yes, of course. "The appeal system merely confirms the bias of the original court..." 

A hot mug was pushed into his shaking hands. "You can stop now, Blake. Blake? Shut up." 

"I'm not done," he protested. 

"Zen agrees with us. Earth is the target. You've been talking for six hours solid. Stop and sit down before you keel over. "

He gulped at the hot chocolate, let himself be guided to a seat. "Zen hasn't said anything."

"Not to you. I've been talking to it in the rec room for the last couple of hours. It's quite capable of processing multiple conversations."

"Oh," Blake said, exhausted and deflated. "So you persuaded it?" 

"I don't think my limited oratory skills made much of a difference. You’re the one it listens to. It's now vowing to wipe out the entire senior administration of the Federation in the name of freedom. You can be proud."

Not even Avon's cynicism was getting to Blake now. He just wanted to crash. "Is it safe to sleep?" 

"As far as Liberator's concerned, I imagine so. We are still crawling along in deep space."

"And as far as you're concerned? "

Avon sighed. "I don't intend to do anything untoward while you sleep, a declaration I imagine you won't believe. You are going to have to risk it at some point, though. You’ve got Zen to protest anything that looks like oppression; you should be safe enough."

They were months away from Earth. Blake couldn't imagine Avon taking him prisoner again this early and having to deal with a captive all that time. If the man intended to act again he'd do it much closer to their destination. 

"I'm going to bed, then," he announced. "I'll take Cally's room. Stay away from me." 

Avon's mouth twisted sideways. "I can certainly promise you your bed will remain inviolate." 

That hadn't been remotely what he meant and Avon knew it. Blake slammed the mug down a little too hard on the side of the couch and stalked out. 

 

He woke to a sensation that something had changed. At first he thought it was the unfamiliar bed, the slight scent left by Cally, the slowly rotating crystals hanging from the ceiling that broke the artificial light up into a thousand rainbows. Where was the Auron now? What had she done with Avon's blood money? He missed her; he missed them all. 

When he got past the distraction of absent friends to figure out what was bothering him he rolled off the bed onto his feet, grabbing the gun by the bedside. "Zen! Where’s Avon?" 

**Kerr Avon is currently in his quarters.**

Right. He pounded down the corridor and hammered on the door until it opened. 

"Blake?" Avon was bleary eyed and bare chested. " What's the.. Oh. " He looked down at the gun barrel pressed just under his breast bone. "I see. What is it now?"

" You treacherous bastard! What did you do? "

"Do when? I've been asleep."

Blake jabbed with the gun and Avon stepped backwards. "Honestly, Blake. I have no idea what's upset you now. Is there something..." He paused for a second, listening. "Ah. That’s not a good noise, is it? Zen, current speed and destination." 

**Standard by nine. Destination Earth.**

"By nine? Time to reach Earth orbit?"

**Six point seven three hours.**

"This is not my doing." Avon said to Blake. 

"It's very convenient for you."

'No. Convenient would not involve risking being shot. If I had any control over the situation I would be exercising it a lot better than this. Zen, why have you accelerated?"

 **Previous speed was incompatible with main objectives.**

"What about needing a pilot?"

 **Liberator is now autonomous. Requirement suspended until a pilot can be obtained.**

"Satisfied?" Avon said. "If anyone can be held responsible, it's you. Will you please remove that thing now so I can get dressed? We don't have a great deal of time." 

Blake lowered the gun with an odd sense of both relief and disappointment. This wasn't the confrontation he'd been waiting for, after all. Instead it was Zen that was the danger, again. 

He couldn't bring himself to feel anger at the computer despite everything. It would be too much like hating himself. Poor Liberator was hurtling at almost unimaginable speed to her destruction, nothing but another victim of his own too high ideals and Avon's avarice.


	7. Blood

“What does Charon have to do with anything?”

Avon had just come back onto the flight deck from some task or other that he hadn’t bothered to keep Blake informed about. Liberator’s projected flight path was on screen.

“There’s a secret military base in the twilight zone. They use it for low grav low temp weapons development and training.”

“So why are we going anywhere near it?”

“Liberator can take it out, easily.” Blake tapped on the screen. “We fly between it and Pluto at high speed- it will be destroyed before it can get a message off to Earth.” 

“No.” Avon said, flatly. “Zen, reroute flight path. You are not attacking the Charon base.”

**Incorrect. Roj Blake is correct. Charon base is an appropriate target.**

He turned to Blake. “Tell it to stop.”

“Why should I?” Blake was utterly fed up with being ordered around. “Zen’s right- Charon is an appropriate target. We can destroy a Federation military operation at no risk to ourselves. We might as well get something out of this.”

“For the Cause? Forget it, Blake. Liberator is going to Earth. She’s not taking out anyone on the way.”

“Since when did you become a pacifist?” Blake snapped.

“Hardly that. You can teleport down there and massacre the entire staff with your bare hands, if it makes you feel better. But you are not using Liberator to do your dirty work for you.”

Avon was just being contrary, Blake decided. “We’ve used the ship’s guns often enough and you’ve never protested.”

“Not since she became autonomous. Liberator is not a mere weapon in your hand any more. You haven’t ordered Zen to attack Charon; you’ve persuaded it. Even you should be able to see the difference.”

“I certainly can. It means that two of us agree that taking out Charon’s base will benefit humanity. And that means that you’re outvoted, Avon. We are going to Charon.”

“We are not!” Avon’s voice was rising. “You do not encourage a sentient computer to kill humans, Roj Blake! I’m aware that my ethical standards don’t normally meet with your approval but you must see that.” 

“What does it matter? After Earth…,” 

“Earth isn’t fixed in stone. Liberator might change her mind. She can do that now, remember? Zen is the most dangerous entity that I’ve ever encountered and you want to teach it murder now as well as your stupid politics.”

“It’s not murder! The rebellion is a war, Kerr Avon. It always has been. Zen’s chosen to fight in it, just as I did. I will not deny it the right to act on its beliefs, to do the right thing, just because it’s a computer. I’d rather work alongside a computer with principles than a greedy, selfish, treacherous, egotistical bastard who happens to be human!”

Avon shook his head. “Utter idiocy! It’s not your friend, Blake. It’s not your comrade in arms. It’s an alien machine.”

“And what would you know about friendship, Avon? You’ve betrayed every friend you ever had!”

“I know that if you’d been better at picking yours you wouldn’t be in this mess.” Avon’s voice was scathing. 

Blake hit him. Low, in the stomach, to hurt. As Avon staggered backwards he followed it up with a punch in the face, and another. All the fury of the last few days had come to a head. He didn’t even think about the gun at his side; he just hit the man over and over.

He barely registered Zen’s voice echoing around them.

**Crew malfunction.**

Avon half blocked a couple of his blows. He seemed to be trying to yell something at him. Blake took no notice. Another satisfying punch to the man’s jaw, a kick to his shin. Blood everywhere.

**Crew malfunction. Diagnostic; reason unknown. Risk of damage to other systems; unacceptable.**

Doors slammed shut; the lights dimmed. 

**Sterilisation commenced.**

That finally got Blake’s attention. He stopped hitting Avon and twisted around. All the doors were closed. A low, unfamiliar hum was coming from the ceiling. 

Zen seemed oblivious to the two men shouting at it. The air in the room had become a little warmer. 

“I am not malfunctioning!” Blake insisted. 

**Crew malfunction detected.** Zen’s calm seemed almost smug. **Sterilisation in progress.**

“Try the doors!” Blake called to the other man. Avon’s blood streaked face turned back to him. “Deadlocked. This place is a deathtrap.”

Liberator was going to kill both of them. Even though Blake would have happily killed the other man himself a moment ago it didn’t seem fair. “Kerr Avon is not malfunctioning,” he yelled at Zen. “You cannot kill your operational crew.”

 **One crew malfunction. One crew damaged. Area contains no fully operational crew. Sterilisation in progress.** Zen announced remorselessly. Blake’s clothes were getting soaked in sweat.

“I told you. This is where friendship gets you.” Avon’s face was a mask in red and white. He wiped blood from an eye, turned to face Zen’s lights. “Fuck this. Zen. Access private files Avon 6/48/38 to 6/48/82, excluding 6/48/43, 55 and 56.”

**Accessed.**

“Right. Reference contents within the following contexts; “sex”, “consensual”, “violence”.”

There was a pause. **Confirmed.**

“Roj Blake was operating within acceptable human parameters. Confirm.”

 **Confirmed. No malfunction. Sterilisation cancelled.** The lights went back up.

Avon staggered back against the console. “I didn’t think that was going to work.” he said to a blank wall. “If there are any more crises you’ll find me with the med unit and a large amount of alcohol.” He pulled himself up again and walked out, limping badly, without a single glance towards Blake.

Blake sat at his usual post, waiting for his heart rate and breathing to slow. Everything non-human on the flight deck seemed to have gone back to normal now that Zen had decided not to kill them. His right hand stung painfully; he’d lost most of the skin covering the knuckles. Maybe he should use the med unit when Avon had finished with it. Maybe not.

God. Avon. 

“Zen,” he said slowly, to the lights. “Show me…” He paused, thinking, for long enough that Zen grumbled **Command not complete.**

“Sorry. Yes. You’d better just show me the flight path again.” 

 

The only thing moving in the room with the med unit was a maintenance robot vacuuming up shards of glass. There was a faint smell of spirits but Avon had gone.

The door to his room was ajar. Blake knocked anyway, but when he got no answer he pushed it open. 

Avon was lying on his bed, eyes closed. He hadn’t washed or changed; his face was still puffy and caked with dried blood. The smell of alcohol was a little stronger in here. 

“I thought you were using the med unit.”

“I did,” Avon said, without opening his eyes. “Diagnostics. You didn’t break anything.”

There didn’t seem to be any good answer to that. Blake came a bit further inside. “I’ve talked to Zen. We are not going to Charon.”

Nothing. He tried again. “That was quick thinking back there.”

“Not really.” 

“Well, I wouldn’t have thought of it.”

A slightly strangled snort came from the bed. “I imagine not, no.”

“You did save both of us.”

“Hero of the hour,” Avon’s voice was dry. “How long to Earth?” 

“Two and a half hours to teleport range. You can’t teleport down there looking like that.”

“I can.” Avon opened his eyes, sat up and swung his legs off the bed. “But I probably won’t. I’ll be back on the flight deck in a few minutes.”

He limped his way over to the bathroom and disappeared inside. Blake could hear the sound of the shower starting up. He stood for a minute looking at the closed door, going over in his mind some of the things he’d intended to say to Avon just now and hadn’t. Eventually he realised that he couldn’t possibly be found standing here when Avon came out again. There would be other conversations. There would have to be. Blake pulled the door closed behind him and started the walk back to the flight deck through the deserted ship.


	8. Resignation

It was probably the worst plan Blake had ever devised. Though, to be fair, Avon had helped a little.

It sounded reasonable enough, particularly if you were an alien computer with a superiority complex. Liberator would fly at very high speed into low Earth orbit, Avon and Blake would teleport down, and then the ship would lure Earth’s defenders out into deep space, where she would destroy half the fleet and outrun the other half back to the now defenceless Earth. She would pick up her crew including the new pilot, and have plenty of time to complete the planetary bombardment before the remains of the fleet limped back to the wrecked and burning planet. 

The battle computer liked it, but then the battle computer was missing a few vital pieces of information about how humans behaved.

Those in control of the Federation were extremely paranoid. Not about aliens, particularly, or about any of the other relatively minor human powers in the Galaxy. Not even about rebels, though rebellion made them seriously uneasy. What truly terrified them was the thought of the generals that they had placed in charge of Federation battlefleets deciding to come home at the head of them. The Home Fleet was designed to protect the President from the ever present risk of a military coup and it was funded, equipped and manned accordingly. Blake estimated that it was roughly five times as big as the one Zen’s calculations took account of and that was before the military satellites were factored in. 

The Home Fleet wouldn’t go chasing an unknown ship, or even one known to be Blake’s, into deep space and leave the planet undefended, though it would no doubt send a handful of pursuit ships to track her path. What Liberator would do once the plan had derailed, Blake wasn’t sure. He thought she would almost certainly come back to Earth anyway, for her crew if nothing else, at which point she would be destroyed. 

He patted the console gently and rather sadly. He’d loved Liberator when she had been his to command in the name of freedom, fast and powerful and home to his friends and allies. Now he couldn’t wait to leave the empty, echoing, dangerously unpredictable ship.

“Show me the manifest of portable explosives, Zen.”

He didn’t know what Avon intended to do when they teleported down to the space academy on Earth. Run, probably, with as much of Liberator’s remaining wealth as he could stuff into his pockets. Blake was going to cause some trouble. Zen would never get to destroy any of the Earth installations that they had targeted, but Blake could at least sabotage the Academy while he was passing through. Even Avon’s peculiar objections couldn’t hold for that; he wasn’t using Liberator and Zen would never even know. 

 

**Crew activity incomplete.**

“What’s that, Zen?” Blake didn’t look up. He was trying to decide what timings to set for the explosives and Zen’s announcement sounded about as routine as it got.

**Sex. Consensual. Violence. Activity incomplete.**

“What? No, Zen. I’m…your crew is not doing any more of that.” He’d been trying not to think about Avon’s battered and bloody face, how the man had looked lying motionless on that bed.

**Activity incomplete,** Zen insisted. **Data provided indicates completion required.**

Blake belatedly realised what sort of completion it was talking about. “No! I don’t care what happens in his bloody porn collection. We are not…”

“We don’t have time, I’m afraid, Zen.” Avon had arrived on the flight deck at last. His face was clean and unmarked again, his voice rich and amused. “We’re too close to Earth. Scratching that particular itch will have to wait.”

**Itch constitutes discomfort. Crew discomfort reduces efficiency. Confirm efficiency reduced.**

“I’ve never found it a particular handicap before. No, Zen, efficiency is not reduced. Crew activity will remain incomplete until current operations are finished.”

“And pigs fly.” Blake muttered. 

“Don’t confuse it, Blake. It’s only worried about your level of sexual frustration, after all. Zen clearly has our best interests at heart. How long to Earth orbit?”

Blake could swear that Avon was enjoying this. He hadn’t seen the man this relaxed since before this whole kidnapping thing started. In the circumstances – all the circumstances- it was inexplicable.

**Thirty nine minutes and seventeen seconds.**

Avon came over to look at the heap that Blake was working on. “Looks like you’re planning a small war there. Can you actually move carrying that lot?”

“I don’t intend to carry it far.”

“Have you considered the chemical incendiaries? A little smoke and noise could work wonders in buying you time to set this stuff.”

“I don’t need advice on bomb setting from a crooked computer tech. I was doing this sort of thing while you were sitting in your cushy little office trying to make yourself obscenely rich. Besides, I can’t carry them as well.”

“I could.”

Blake put down the device he was priming, glared at Avon. “But you won’t. Why should you? There’s nothing in it for you.”

“We’re teleporting down inside the security cordon. Getting out might well be easier with a diversion, and will almost certainly be simpler if we stay together. I’ll get the incendiaries. Anything else you need from supplies?”

“I don’t want you at my back, Avon. Not any more.”

There was a flicker of something across the man’s face, before he smiled. “Then I’ll have to go in front. Half a dozen of the incendiaries should do it.” As he straightened up a hand moved involuntarily to his stomach before he pushed it down again and turned to walk out.

Blake watched the limp that Avon was doing his best to disguise, bemused. They were almost certainly going to have to fight their way out of a military installation and go into hiding on Earth with no prospect of a ship to return to. Why on earth would Avon choose to start the mission injured when the med unit could easily have healed all the damage?

He didn’t understand Kerr Avon. Not at all.

 

By the time his preparation and packing was complete there was still twenty minutes to go. Their time on Liberator shouldn’t end like this, he thought, just the two of them at each other’s throats with the others lost somewhere in space, far behind them. He wouldn’t let Avon win that much. He stood up.

“Zen. Do you remember the rest of the crew?”

**Crew Kerr Avon, Roj Blake.**

“It wasn’t, though. You had the others. Cally, Jenna, Gan, Vila. They were all your crew. They are all your crew, Liberator. Though they were taken away by force they never wanted to leave you. They never wanted to stop being your crew.”

“Don’t.” Avon at the doorway, bag over his shoulder, his voice soft. “Blake. Don’t confuse it, not now.”

“Don’t tell me how to talk to my own damn ship! Liberator remembers. Don’t you?”

**Crew Kerr Avon, Roj Blake, Cally, Jenna Stannis, Olag Gan, Vila Restal.**

That was so much better, even if Avon no longer deserved his place alongside them. “Good, Zen. Don’t forget them again.”

**Confirmed.**

“Delightfully sentimental,” Avon commented. “Undoubtedly worth every bit of the trouble you have yet again dropped us in.”

“What trouble?” Blake demanded. 

**Inconsistent crew data.**

Avon laughed. “Of course. Just when we were this close to getting out of here alive, you screw up again. Zen. Crew data are not important to this mission. Crew data will be clarified when we return from Earth. Confirm.”

**Correct crew data necessary. Priority clarification required.**

“What does it want?" Blake demanded.

“It wants to know which one of us has lied to it. Reliable data input is no doubt one of Zen’s main requirements from functional crew. Conflicting stories, like the one I gave it days ago and the one you’ve just given it, upset it.”

“You don’t seem particularly concerned, so I assume you’ve got a fix.”

“Nothing comes to mind right now. How about you? It is after all your ship, apparently.”

Blake shook his head. “I don’t even know what you told it.”

**Priority clarification required.**

“What are you going to do?” Blake demanded of Avon.

Avon shrugged. “Nothing. I’ve given up.”

“What do you mean, given up?”

“Every time I turn my back you do something else to try to get us killed. Or, presumably for light relief, get everyone else killed. If I don’t turn my back you just try to kill me.” His hand went up to smooth his jaw. “If we get past this particular drama you’ll no doubt find some excuse to shoot me in the back as soon as we teleport down. We won’t survive long on Earth anyway with the entire planet looking for us. It feels as if I’ve been fighting both of you for days just to live a few hours longer. I’m tired and I’ve had enough.”

**Priority clarification required.**

“Shut up, Zen. I’m talking. You sort this one out, Blake. You caused it. I warned you yet again and you went ahead anyway. It’s your problem now.”

Avon swung the heavy bag onto one seat of a sofa and threw himself down beside it. “Get coffee,” he said to the little maintenance bot. “And hurry up with it.” He looked dog tired now that the smile had gone. 

More than tired. Exhausted, Blake thought. It had been resignation, not relaxation, smoothing the cares earlier. He ought to be figuring out something to say to Zen, as soon as he could drag his attention away from Avon’s weary, defeated face, 

**Correct crew data necessary. Priority clarification required.**

He wasn’t the one who had lied. How was he meant to sort this out? The easiest way was to tell Zen the truth, let the computer deal with the traitor. Blake wondered if Avon thought he might even contemplate this. Probably, after the way he’d attacked the man.

Time. He just needed to win them both some time. Blake walked up to the back of the room, so that he could see both Zen’s lights and Avon’s slumped figure. “Zen. What do you calculate the logical purpose of the human emotion of fear to be?”

**Query impulse towards avoidance of unnecessary damage?**

“Not really, no. How about greed?”

**Query impulse towards securing of scarce resources to maintain function?**

“Closer. Still not there. Anger?”

Zen hummed. **No satisfactory equivalent.**

“Betrayal?”

**No satisfactory equivalent.**

Avon was shifting round to watch him now, face still closed and drawn. 

“Physical desire?”

**No satisfactory equivalent.**

“So you do not fully understand the processes by which your human crew function, Zen. Confirm.”

**Confirmed.**

“You cannot therefore accurately judge what our needs are. Confirm.”

**Confirmed.**

“Right now your crew’s need to carry on with their incomplete activity has higher priority than your need for clarification. Confirm.”

**Data not available.**

“I’m telling you. That’s your data. Confirm.”

A pause. **Not enough time available for crew activity completion before Earth operation commences,** Zen insisted, parroting Avon.

“How long until we are in teleport distance?”

**Eleven minutes and three seconds.**

“We don’t need to complete anything before Earth operation. We do need to continue uninterrupted for approximately nine minutes. Confirm.”

**Confirmed.** Zen finally agreed. 

Blake wiped a hand across his forehead. On the plus side, he’d got Zen off their backs. On the minus… he spread his hands in mock apology towards Avon. “Best I could do. You did tell me to sort it.” 

“I did. I should have known better.” Avon pushed himself reluctantly up onto his feet again, waving away the coffee bearing robot. “I suppose you had better come down here and start hitting me again.”


	9. Abuse

Blake walked slowly down the flight deck towards Avon. The man didn't flinch, not quite, but Blake could see his muscles tighten in anticipation, fingers down by his sides curling into fists.

“I'd rather not hit you again. Couldn't we...” Blake tailed off, vaguely embarrassed.

“What? Make out on the sofa for Zen's benefit? I don't think so. I'd much prefer to be repeatedly punched in the face again.” Avon's voice was harshly sarcastic.

Blake came to a stop in front of him. There was a pause.

“Don't screw this up as well.” Avon sounded exhausted already. “Just do it.”

He nodded, swung a reluctant fist into Avon's stomach. There wasn't much real force behind it but Avon folded over with a grunt of pain that Blake didn't think was feigned. He'd hit the man very hard repeatedly in the gut just a few hours ago.

“Was it only your face that got healed?” he demanded.

Avon was upright again, braced for another blow. “Keep going.”

“I can't. I don't know where you're still injured.”

Avon snorted exasperation. “So hit me in the face then. Get on with it. We have an audience, remember.”

Blake slapped him a couple of times. It felt horrible. “You could at least hit me back.”

Avon was rubbing a reddening cheek. “Stick to the script.”

“I don't have a script! I know less than Zen about what we're supposed to be doing here.”

“I gave Zen access to dozens of video files. Are you telling me you didn't look at even one?”

“No! Why would I? I guessed that you called them private for a reason. “

“Your rarefied code of bloody ethics is incomprehensible to mere mortal humans. You do know that?” Avon sighed. “You're the sadist in this scenario, and so far you're making a pathetically poor showing at it. Push me around. Dominate me. Be a bully. I don't know why you're finding it hard; you do it without thinking most of the time.”

That was not fair. Unfortunately Blake's annoyance didn't make him any more happy about thumping the man. He tried a two handed shove to the shoulders, then another, backing Avon up against the wall. Only playacting. It shouldn't be difficult. If it had been anyone but Avon, any day but today, it would have been easy.

“If you fuck this up, our mutual friend will go back to asking awkward questions and I will probably end up dead.” Avon’s voice was a low murmur. “Compared to that a bit of rough treatment doesn't bother me at all. Just think of the worst interrogator you ever had and be him for ten minutes.”

That was an idea. There had been a man; Blake had never known his name but he'd learned to dread his presence. He stood back for a moment, eyes running down Avon's tense body, then his hand reached out, fingers tightening around the man's neck. “Like this?”

Avon struggled against the suffocating grip, managed to dislodge him. That wouldn't do. Blake dropped to his knees to reach under the nearest console and brought out the restraints that he'd kicked under there days before. “Controls?” he demanded.

Avon fished them out of a back pocket. Interesting. Blake couldn't think of any legitimate reason for the man to still be carrying them around. He grabbed a shoulder to spin Avon around to face the wall and pinion his wrists behind his back.

“On your knees.”

Avon dropped obediently. Blake remembered vividly what it had been like to face a blank wall, knowing his tormentor was behind him. He waited a few seconds then kicked Avon, not too hard, in the small of the back. At least he knew Avon's earlier injuries were all to the front.

There was a gasp of pain. Blake kneed him in the spine, getting another small cry, then closed both hands again around the man's windpipe. It was much easier when he didn't need to look into Avon's face.

He bent down to Avon's ear, his hands not yet tight. “Would you really have sold me back to them?”

“Of course.” The voice was weary disdain.

His thumbs ran over the back of Avon's neck, his fingers interlocked at his throat. “And when we get down to Earth? Will you sell me out then?”

Silence. He pulled one hand away, buried it in Avon's short hair to pull his head backwards. “Answer me.”

Nothing. Blake slammed Avon's face forward into the wall, not nearly hard enough to break anything. “Answer me.”

“What do you think?” Avon snarled, a flicker of anger getting through the tiredness.

“Zen. Give me a countdown to teleport range, thirty seconds intervals.”

**Confirmed.**

Blake glanced down at the detested restraints, now tight around Avon's wrists. “I could put you out of action right now. Make you take your chance with Liberator.”

Avon said something inaudible.

“What was that?” He tugged hard on hair.

“Don't. Please.” Avon managed a little louder.

Playacting. That was all they were doing.

**Seven minutes thirty seconds.**

Five minutes to go. Be a bully, Avon had said. Surely the bully would push, now he had an opening. “Begging's good,” he said. “But I'd like to see your face while you do it. Stand up, turn round.”

Avon's eyes met his, slid away. Wary, not arrogant, not disdainful. Blake slapped the reddened cheek again, almost in the role enough this time to feel a certain satisfaction together with the discomfort. Sell me out, would you, Kerr Avon? Not this time.

“Ask me again.”

Avon took a deep breath. “Please,” he said. “Don't leave me behind.”

For Blake the next five minutes took a very long time indeed. He had to seem to hurt Avon in ways that wouldn’t actually damage him, trying desperately to remember exactly what he’d already done to the man a few hours before. Avon would surely warn him if he went too far, but Avon turned out to be a surprisingly good actor, cowering pathetically and mostly silently in what Blake felt might be a fine display for Zen but fairly unhelpful as communication between them.

He spent a great deal of time with his hands around Avon’s neck, fairly sure that he wouldn't be causing any more harm than a lingering sore throat. Avon thrashed and struggled for air while Blake laughed aloud rather too hammily, reciting some more of the lengthy list of the man’s misdoings into his wide eyed and desperate face.

He’d just released him for the fourth or fifth time, watching him slump onto the floor, gasped for air, when Zen finally announced **Two minutes thirty seconds.**

At last. Avon was curled up at his feet, eyes closed, whimpering, though Blake was pretty sure he wasn’t in any real pain.

“Time to go, Avon.” Blake said. He’d put the controller down somewhere; he looked around, retrieved it from the sofa. “Avon?”

The man hadn’t moved.

“Avon! Game over! Get up.” Blake fumbled with the buttons and the restraints fell off

Avon twitched, and his eyes opened, unfocused at first then sharp on Blake. "Right," he said and rolled elegantly onto to his feet, before his right leg gave way and he collapsed.

Blake dropped to his side. “Hell! What is it?”

“Just stiffness. It was bruised before.” Avon pushed him away, clambered up again more carefully. “I’ll be…” he tried putting his weight on the knee and cursed. “Fine in a minute.”

**Four ships currently in pursuit. Two minutes to teleport range.**

Blake picked up both the heavy bags. “I’ll be back.” He dragged both of them to the teleport room, with a little difficulty, then ran back again. Avon was staggering down the corridor with one hand on the wall; he didn’t pull away from an arm around his waist though he did complain, “It’s just stiff. Don’t fuss.” He looked rough; his face was swelling and his nose was bleeding again.

**One minute thirty seconds.**

Not enough time for the med unit. “Where are those painkillers?” Blake asked.

 **Seventeen ships currently in pursuit.** Zen told them. **Teleport window nine seconds maximum.**

“Sod the painkillers,” Avon hissed. “Just get me off this fucking ship in the next ninety seconds!”

Zen announced one minute some time before they reached the teleport room. Blake let Avon limp onto the platform unaided while he checked the controls. “Zen, teleport co-ordinates set for inside Academy complex?”

**Confirmed.**

“Status of attacking ships?”

**Liberator will be in range of hostile weapons in approximately thirty three seconds**

“Can we teleport down before then?” 

**Confirmed.**

“Right.” He ran over to join Avon. “Countdown to teleport, Zen, low volume.”

 **Twenty two. Twenty one.** Zen droned quietly. **Confirm pick up coordinates. Eighteen. Seventeen.**

“What? Oh yes. Pick up from the same co-ordinates. We’ll be waiting, Zen.”

 **Crew recovery is necessary.** The old Zen would never have volunteered its opinion on an operation. **Twelve. Eleven.**

“Don’t worry, Zen.” Avon’s voice was uncharacteristically gentle. “You’ll get all your crew back. Just put us down safely, and then follow your primary objective. Everything will be fine.”

**Confirmed. Three. Two. One. Teleporting.**

Blake felt the solid ground beneath his feet, the accustomed gravity, the taste of the air. No doubt but that they were on Earth again. He glanced up but there was no chance of seeing Liberator or her pursuers in the bright sunlight.

“She’s gone.” Avon said. “Neither of us got her in the end.” He slipped the bracelet off his wrist and tucked it into his bag.

“Your fault.” Blake pointed out without the energy for much anger. “Let’s get under cover. We’re on our own now.”


	10. Mistrust

“In here!”

Blake ducked under the stairwell after Avon before the security guards could turn round. They waited in silence until the sound of footsteps was gone.

“Follow them?” Avon asked.

“I think so.” Blake had been looking for somewhere good to plant the devices but all they'd seen so far were corridors and empty classrooms. Avon wasn’t moving any better despite the cloth tied up around his knee. They ought to be getting out of here. “Give it a minute, in case the guards stop again. “

He looked across at the crouching figure. “Want to tell me what was going on back on the ship?”

Avon didn't look round at him. “What are you talking about?”

“About how far you were out of it at the end there. I thought you’d have the sense to warn me if you were going under. The last thing either of us needed was you going through some sort of PTSD.”

Avon did look round, startled. “That’s not … I was preoccupied.” 

“Preoccupied with what? Not with getting away, obviously.”

“We should go now.” Avon moved back into the corridor and set off in a slow hobble.

Blake caught up with him, slowed to his pace, hissing in frustration. “And why the hell didn't you fix that knee while you had the chance?”

“Will you please stop asking inane questions?”

It wasn't a inane question, Blake thought. He had no idea what was going on in Avon's head. It wasn't as if he knew anything about the man's private life.... 

At the word ‘private’ far too much clicked into place. Avon had had those video clips for a reason. His first reaction was intense annoyance. “I went through all that just for your gratification?” 

Avon turned on him. “That was your idea, remember? Not mine. You didn’t leave me any choice but to play along.” 

“You didn't have to enjoy it!” Blake snapped back at him. 

“Oh, yes, you wanted me to suffer, naturally. What's the point of beating me up otherwise? I did my best to oblige you on that count and now you're whingeing that I can't run. You're a bloody awkward man to please, Roj Blake.” 

“I don't want to be pleased!” Blake insisted. “Not by you! I want to know what crazy notions are going through your head about me. Us. You do know that there is no us? Absolutely not?” 

Avon snorted derision. “Don't flatter yourself on that score.”

“So tell me what's going on in your perverted fucking head, then!” 

Avon limped along silently for long enough for Blake to start to feel more than a little uncomfortable about the last thing he’d said. He was damned if he was going to apologise over a few careless words, though, to a man who’d betrayed him so thoroughly. 

“How about these?” Avon said calmly. 

Administration offices. Some were occupied but no-one seemed concerned about the two men walking past the windows. Blake shook his head. “Civilians. And I do need answers, Kerr Avon.”

Avon quickened his pace a little, still silent for several minutes. Finally he sighed. “I have a certain predisposition to respond to violence. I do not however like violent people. If you think my physiological response to being beaten up is some sort of compliment on your personal qualities you are sadly mistaken. That's all it was, a reaction. It won't happen again.”

Blake shook his head, puzzled. “You can't have many satisfactory relationships if you're only attracted to people you despise.”

“What makes you think I have any at all?” Avon stopped abruptly. “This will do, surely?”

The sign on the door read ‘Commander Seraphe Vange, Chief Administrator.’ A legitimate target and far enough from the occupied offices to keep civilian casualties down. There were no windows out to the corridor this time. “Is she in?”

“I can't hear anything.” Avon pulled the door a little way open. “No. Hurry though - she wouldn't leave this door unlocked if she was away for long.”

“Keep watch,” Blake ordered as he knelt being the desk to set the charges. “So how does it work, then, this physiological response of yours?”

“I'm not going to discuss it.” Avon said harshly. “It's none of your business. This whole idea that you and I might get it on might be new and exciting for you but it grew old for me a long time ago. It's going nowhere. Forget it.”

Blake hasn't been thinking anything of the sort. Not with Avon, for God's sake. He just wanted to figure out what was in the man's head. “Set one of the incendiaries back at that last junction. Give it three...” He looked at Avon's knee- “No, four minutes.”

He thought about what Avon had said while his hands worked automatically. By the time Avon returned he had another question. “A long time ago?”

“I said forget it!”

“You were attracted to me?”

“Let's see. You're an arrogant bully with an imposing physical presence and a tendency to treat me like dirt. That pushed a few buttons, yes. It didn't make me stupid enough to want to get involved.”

Blake’s head snapped up but Avon was looking out along the corridor rather than at him. “So that's why you did it.”

Avon leant against the doorway, bent down to adjust the bandage around his knee. He didn’t seem to have heard.

“Avon. That's why you took Liberator and me.”

The other man stood up again, turned around to confront Blake. “You think I kidnapped you out of lust? That is so wrong it’s laughable. I told you, I needed the money.”

“You needed out of the situation. That's what was unbearable. Not the danger. I should have known that a man like you doesn't crack that easily. Look at you now; we could get shot at any moment, you’re as steady nerved as me.”

“I would prefer not to be reminded of just how much danger we’re in.” Avon started down the corridor away from the incendiaries, and him.

Blake raised his voice to reach the limping man. “Everything you disliked about me was everything that made me so attractive, and I didn’t once even have the decency to look at you twice.” He finished with the charges and stood up, swinging his bag over his back. All that he’d been put through, his ship lost, his crew gone, because Kerr Avon couldn’t handle a workplace crush? The stupid man!

“You couldn’t even just leave, could you? Hole up somewhere, change your name, keep your head down and out of trouble? Because I’d still be out there, being the hero, with my big shiny spaceship and my daring exploits and my galaxy wide reputation.

“And,” he shouted at the man now turning the corner a good twenty yards down the corridor, “my adoring and sexually available crew!” 

He ran after, slowed down to take the curve and found Avon’s gun pointing at his face.

“If I get out of here, I’ll tell them all you got shot doing something brave and foolhardy. Typically Roj Blake. It will even be true.”

Blake had stopped, eyes on the steady barrel. “The others will come after you.”

“That old song? The others were never going to come after me, Blake. Not that way. They don’t know what happened. All they know is that you, I and the Liberator went without them. With the Liberator destroyed and you dead or captured I can tell them how it was all your idea.” His smile was thoroughly unpleasant. “After all, Kerr Avon would hardly have gone to the trouble of leaving them somewhere safe and with a great deal of money. Everyone knows I’m just not that nice.”

The one thing he’d thought showed that Avon must have a conscience, and it had been a ploy.

“Bastard.”

“You should have remembered that before you set out to annoy me. Have you anything else clever to say?”

Blake thought about it very quickly. “No.”

Avon’s finger tightened on the trigger, the noise loud in the echoing corridor. At first Blake though that the man had fired at him and missed, but then Avon fired again, and a thump came from behind Blake. He turned to see the two bodies crumpled not ten feet behind him. 

The incendiaries exploded, deafening Blake for a moment. “Shall we get out of here?” Avon shouted, raising the gun and hobbling in an approximation of a run, as fast as his injuries would allow.

 

“How was your day at work, dear?”

Avon grimaced at the poor attempt at humour, tossed his jacket on his bed, dropped his tool box next to it. “I met someone who might be useful.”

“About time.” They had been on Earth for three weeks now, and seemed no closer to leaving it.

“If you’d had the surgery…”

“No.” An argument they’d rehearsed to death. Blake would not change his face. A leader needed to be recognisable, however much trouble that caused right now. 

Being recognisable meant, at the moment, mostly staying in the small set of rooms they’d rented while Avon went hunting for passage in his own idiosyncratic way, which apparently involved fixing computers. Everybody had need of a good computer technician and, he assured Blake, he was rapidly progressing up the hierarchy of criminals that ran the blacker parts of the spaceport. Money wasn’t a problem; Avon had stuffed his pockets with Liberator’s wealth, just as Blake had predicted, but money was also not enough. Flashing it around would just make them a target. 

Avon picked up the tool box again and stretched up to stow it in the high cupboard above his bed. Blake frowned as his wrists emerged from his black sleeves.

“Where did you get that mark?” There was a red ring around his right wrist. 

Avon paused for a second. “The somebody who might be useful.”

It looked like rope burn to Blake. “Business or pleasure?”

Avon slammed the box into the back of the cupboard. “One question too many. What’s for dinner?” He wouldn’t be drawn into any sort of conversation for the rest of the evening. 

Blake lay awake that night worrying as he’d done so often over the last few weeks. He only had Avon’s word that he was trying to get them both offworld, rather than, for instance, negotiating a price for Blake’s head. Avon’s word meant very little, if anything at all. Now the man appeared to be quite literally in bed with whoever he was dealing with. Blake was getting less inclined to trust him, not more.

It was time to go it alone. He’d decided that weeks ago, had never quite got round to leaving. He would, tomorrow. Avon could manage perfectly well- better, probably- on his own and Blake would undoubtedly be safer away from him. 

After Avon had left next morning Blake spread out their small hoard of possessions on his bed and started to pack. The three teleport bracelets glimmered at him, but he couldn’t think of a use for them. Avon might be able to reverse engineer some of the tech, given the right resources. He’d just decided to leave them behind when they started to flash.

Blake stared at them for a moment then grabbed one. “Hello?”

“Blake! Put it on. We’ve only got a few seconds.” 

“Jenna?” Blake was about to clasp the bracelet around his wrist when he realised. “Avon’s not here. I don’t know where to find him.”

“Avon? Never mind him. We’ve got a dozen ships on our tail. Ready to teleport?” 

“Can’t leave him. Can you come back later?” 

“Zen says no chance. Also six seconds till we start getting hit. Come up, please!”

He thought fast. “We’ll have to meet you somewhere else. Jotunheim. Thirty days.” 

“Blake…” There was a fizzle and the bracelet went dead again. 

 

Avon shut the door behind him, held up a small memory chip. “Two tickets to Rainus Three on a fast passenger freighter. We leave in three hours time. What are you doing with those?”

Blake tossed a bracelet at him. “Keep it with you. Can we get from Rainus Three to Jotunheim?”

“It’s a transport hub. We should be able to get anywhere within reason. And Jotunheim’s as good a place as any other as far as I’m concerned; I’ve got contacts there, I could find some real work to do. But why on earth do you want to go there? I don’t think they are exactly ripe for revolution.”

“We’re meeting Liberator there in thirty days time. Jenna’s on board.”

Avon stared at him. “What happened?”

“I have no idea. We didn’t have time to chat. They were only in range for a few seconds; long enough to arrange a rendezvous, that’s all.”

Avon turned the bracelet around in his hands then tossed it back. “You should have gone while you had the chance. I have no intention of going anywhere near that ship again.”

“Avon…”

“No. The computer is insane and the crew aren’t much better. The ship is a deathtrap.”

Blake sighed. “We could at least give you a lift somewhere.”

“Like Cygnus Alpha, maybe? I have no reason to trust anyone on Liberator. That’s the downside of betrayal.”

“Will you come to Jotunheim, at least? You said it was as good a place as any other.”

Avon shrugged. “I might. But don’t expect me to set foot on Liberator again.”


	11. Severance

Blake and Avon only stayed a matter of hours on Rainus Three before boarding a huge tourist star liner due to call at Polaris in twenty days time. It was the only cabin available at short notice; tiny, with a pair of bunk beds and not much else, but it still made a significant dent in the money Avon had brought off Liberator. They could have flown there in two days on a scheduled flight much cheaper but they wanted to get off Rainus Three as soon as possible and the liner was probably a safe enough hideout while they waited for the 30 days to be up.

The ship’s luxury facilities and exotic day trips were wasted on the pair of them; they ordered food in their cabin and kept out of sight of everyone else. Avon spent most of his time curled up on the lower bunk with his hand reader. Blake got bored and restless. Being shut in anywhere always reminded him uncomfortably of prisons, Federation and others.

“Why did you choose Jotunheim for a rendezvous?” The question came out of the blue from the bunk underneath him as he was playing his thousandth game of solitaire.

“I don’t know. It was the first name to come to mind, I guess. I had six seconds; there wasn’t time for a discussion. You’d chosen it, so I guessed the Federation couldn’t have much control there.”

“No.” Avon returned to his book.

Blake spent much of the long journey thinking about their time on Liberator, and how things had turned out. He came to the reluctant conclusion that no, he hadn’t behaved well towards Avon. Not badly enough to justify a tenth of what the man had done, but not entirely well either. He had not found it easy to deal with Avon’s lack of social conscience but he need not have been quite so openly scornful. And maybe, just maybe, he had come across as a little bit bossy at times. Not that that had been entirely his fault; the group had needed a leader. But he clearly had not come across as the sort of person that Avon could have talked to about his issues and to that extent he supposed that he was, peripherally, responsible for the escalation. 

Blake didn’t like the idea of being at fault. He never had. He felt that it put him under some sort of obligation to put things right, but he didn’t even know what ‘right’ might look like this time. After a while he came to the conclusion that ‘right’ in this case had been what his instincts had told him anyway when Jenna had called; allowing Avon back on Liberator. Not forgiven, exactly, and certainly watched, but back. It wouldn’t be the same without him, anyway and they needed someone to deal with Zen. 

Avon ungratefully scuppered this grand gesture by continuing to insist that he had no intention of going anywhere near Liberator ever again. 

 

They were still a week away from Polaris when Blake finally reached what he felt was a momentous decision. He had been lying awake for a while that night; without exercise or much mental stimulation neither of them slept very well. He could hear Avon’s steady breathing from the bunk below but he was fairly sure that the man wasn’t asleep either.

“Avon.”

Silence.

“I’ve been thinking.”

Silence.

“Seriously. I’ve thought about a lot of things and I think, maybe, we might…”

“No.”

He bridled at that. “You didn’t know what I was going to say.”

“I knew near enough what it was. You’ve been shifting around for an hour now. If you had something important to say you’d have made sure I was awake first. If it wasn’t important you’d have left it to the morning. The only thing you’re going to deliberately wait until I’m half asleep to bother me about is a proposition. No. Not now, not ever, not negotiable.”

Blake bit his lip and waited a second or two. “Any particular reason?” He hoped it had come across calm and merely curious.

“Do you normally demand a reason when someone turns you down?”

“I suppose not. It just seems a little perverse of you in the circumstances.” 

“Appropriate, then. Drop it, Blake, and keep it dropped. I would have thought you moral upstanding types would have the decency to simply take no for an answer.”

Thus put down, Blake could only concede. “Just let me know if you change your mind.”

“I won't. I’m going to sleep now.”

Blake lay awake for a while longer, listening to Avon’s slow snores. That was unexpected. And yes, disappointing. He’d put a lot of thought into how it might work out between them before he’d raised the subject. Now he supposed that he had to put it out of mind again. And he could still offer Avon no good enough reason to come back to Liberator. 

 

They disembarked at Jotunheim a day before the rendezvous was planned, coming down the long gangway with their few possessions amongst the day trippers from the liner.

“We’ll need some sort of accommodation,” Blake said as they walked through the bright silver shopping mall surrounding the terminal building. 

Avon rolled his shoulders, pulled a face. “First things first. I’ve been wearing these clothes for months and my skin’s started to crawl every time I put them on. I need to do some shopping.”

“Shopping?” Blake frowned at him. “Is it safe to just wander round in the open here? We could be identified.” Jotunheim was technically Federation, after all.

“We will have been identified as soon as we came out of the ship. This place is soaked in technology; it will have the best face recognition software available.”

That was worrying. “Then shouldn’t we be trying to get away from here before anyone catches up with us?”

“There is no ‘away from here’ on Jotunheim. It doesn’t have an underclass or a wilderness. Besides, I told you that I had friends here. I’d rather meet them in something that hasn’t been worn for a month solid. I’ll see you at that coffee shop in an hour.”

Blake watched Avon stride away. Shopping. The argument was, he had to admit, pretty compelling; he’d been away from Liberator’s storerooms for well over a month and he hadn’t been able to get out to the shops on Earth or on the ships. Avon had been here before. If he wasn’t worried, Blake would do his best to follow suit.

The spaceport’s shops seemed to sell every style worn anywhere in the Galaxy. Blake took a while to find something that didn’t look ridiculous. When he got back to the coffee shop he found Avon deep in conversation with a young lady of about sixteen or seventeen in startling purple. As he joined them he got a smile that he would have sworn was genuine out of Avon “Green leather. Very dashing.”

“Very sinister.” He gestured at Avon’s new shiny black. “Are you going to introduce us?”

“There’s no need. “ The girl stood up, smiling. “Roj Blake. My name is Marriel, and I offer you welcome on behalf of the Six Families of Jotunheim.”

Blake nodded, a little stiffly. He had no idea what allegiances these Six Families might have or what they could want with Avon and him. After spending weeks undercover it was disconcerting to have someone address him by name. Avon didn’t look particularly concerned, but Blake thought he didn’t look entirely pleased either.

Coffee finished, they were clearly expected to accompany this woman. Avon strode off at Marriel’s side without hesitation. Blake considered the matter, decided that he might as well go along as well for now. All he needed was to be on this planet in forty three hours time. He felt the comforting weight of the bracelet around his wrist. It didn’t matter much who he was with. 

They took a tiny, beautifully engineered and unbelievably fast gyrocopter away from the spaceport. Marriel piloted it on manual with a great deal of both skill and obvious enjoyment. From her chatter Blake gathered that she was a daughter of the Six Families rather than a servant or employee, and that it wasn’t unusual for her to be asked to meet the Families’ guests at the terminal but he got the impression that apart from being primed with their names and faces she was blithely ignorant of who they were or why they might have been invited. 

Their destination turned out to be a sprawling and luxurious estate about a hundred miles east of the spaceport. Blake could make out formal gardens, swimming pools, sports courts and what he thought might possibly be a zoo as they circled in to land. 

At the entrance to the main building a polite security detail took their guns but nothing else, before they were escorted through to a room of several people all considerably older and dressed rather more plainly than Marriel. A bearded man about ten years older than Blake stepped forward. “Kerr Avon. It’s been too long.” They touched hands formally. “I thought we’d seen the last of you after that bit of trouble you had.”

“I’m a hard man to keep down for long.”

“So I see. And this must be the notorious Roj Blake. Children, wasn’t it?”

Blake felt the temperature in the room drop several degrees. “Political dissent, actually.”

“Probably both, knowing your sort.” He turned back to Avon, “And where is the ship?”

“Out there.”

Blake was getting a very bad feeling about Avon’s friends. “Wait a moment…”

“We need to see it.” The man sounded irritated. “We’re not paying you anything for a description, Kerr.”

“Of course.” Avon said calmly. “Once you’ve brokered this one for me and I have my share of the proceeds, then you can inspect the ship to your heart’s content. Until then it stays out there.”

“Avon! You…” Blake couldn’t think of a word bad enough. “You scoundrel! You Judas! I’m going to kill you this time, absolutely!”

“Do take him away, please.” Avon begged the older man. “I’ve had enough of his abusive language for a lifetime and he’s got an unfortunate tendency to violence.”

Blake would have liked to be able to demonstrate the latter but the security guards were on him before he could reach Avon. Stun sticks left him helpless to resist as they dragged him out of the room. 

 

The clean white detention cell was barely eight feet across, as Blake discovered when he recovered enough to pace up and down furiously. Jotunheim. How could he have been stupid enough to come here? And call the Liberator? No wonder Avon had been surprised at his choice. The man must have been delighted to find his money making deal back on without the need to do anything at all.

It had been too much temptation for a not at all reformed character. Avon was a bastard, through and through. And to think that Blake had nearly…never mind that. He was about to be traded to the Federation. He didn’t have time to waste in self recrimination. A fast ship from the Earth could be here in under a day.

Supper was brought by Marriel, rather to his surprise. She came and sat on the other side of the force screen. “I looked you up. You really were a rebel hero.”

Blake shrugged, came to sit on his side so that they could talk. “I did my best.”

“And you didn’t do anything to those children.”

He smiled. “Kind of you to have faith.”

She frowned. “I broke into the records. Your defence lawyer had found out what really happened.”

Blake stared at her. “You could prove my innocence? From here?”

“Not prove.” She seemed amused at his naivety despite her youth. “Records are changed all the time. A hacker’s word is nothing. But I know.” She frowned. “I told Uncle Aros but he didn’t seem interested. I don’t understand why he’s doing this.”

“Money?” Blake suggested. “It’s the usual culprit.”

Marriel laughed. “We don’t need money.” The confidence of the young and phenomenally rich. “There must be something else going on. Your fr… Kerr Avon gave me a message for you, but I don’t think it’s appropriate.”

What could Avon possibly have to say to him after that? “You’d better let me have it anyway.”

“He suggested that quiet meditation might be your best hope now, with the emphasis on the quiet. It doesn’t sound like a nice thing to say to someone in your situation.” He could tell she was curious as to what his reaction would be.

“No. Tell him back from me that the deepest pits of hell are reserved for those who betray their friends. Would you be prepared to help me get out of here, Marriel?”

She thought about it briefly. “No, I’m afraid not. I don’t think I’d succeed and failing would be embarrassing. I’ll come back tomorrow morning though. I’ve never met a hero before.”

Alone, he paced again. Nothing to be achieved here. Quiet meditation, Avon had jeered. That was odd. Odd for Avon to taunt him with captivity at all, odder to do it via a third party, and it hadn’t even made much sense. Quiet meditation, he repeated to himself. Quiet…

“Zen,” he almost said aloud. Avon was telling him what? To trust in Zen and to keep his mouth shut? But Avon was the one responsible for him being in here. Avon’s plans, set long ago. Avon wanted to sell him to the Federation.

He paced a little more. No. Avon just wanted the money from selling him to the Federation. What happened to him after that… the teleport bracelet was still around his wrist. Not an oversight. Zen wanted its crew back. Blake guessed that Liberator could teleport him back from any ship Earth sent. So was Avon saying don’t worry?

It still wasn’t all of it. Avon would no more waste time on an uplifting message of hope than he would on a jibe at a helpless prisoner. The key point had to be the instruction to keep quiet. Because- he slammed a hand against the unyielding force field- of course! He could sabotage the whole deal. He knew that Avon didn’t have control over Liberator, couldn’t deliver what he was promising. All he had to do was to persuade Marriel’s uncle of that and the Six Families would have no further use for Kerr Avon.

Blake lay face down on the neat bed, closed his eyes and thought about it. Avon had let him walk unwarned into this place before betraying him yet again for money. It would be utter madness to keep quiet, let himself be sold back into captivity just because Kerr Avon asked him to. Wouldn’t it?

By the time Marriel came back with breakfast and news of a Federation delegation just arrived Blake had persuaded himself that he couldn’t possibly place his trust in Avon. Not again. It was up to him to stop this any way he could.

“Can you tell your uncle that I need to talk to him urgently? It’s about the deal he’s doing with Avon.”

“He’s talking to the seriously creepy Federation guy.” She glanced round as a pair of guards arrived. “Apparently they want you there. You can tell him yourself.”

Blake submitted without fuss to having his hands cuffed in front of him. This might be the best chance he had to talk his way out of this. It depended a bit on what the creepy Federation man they’d sent was like, of course.

Unfortunately he came with a black eyepatch and a familiar nasty smile. “Blake. Under these circumstances I can truthfully say it’s nice to see you.” He looked over to the bearded Jotunheimer. “Where’s his ship?”

Aros shook his head. “He arrived on a commercial starliner. His face triggered an automatic alert coming through security and we picked him up at the spaceport.”

“Was he alone?” Travis demanded. Aros nodded. “As far as we can tell, yes.” 

“Just you then, Blake. Pity, but I doubt that the rabble will be much trouble to hunt down without you. I’ll have him transferred to my ship straightaway.”

Blake thought fast. He couldn’t say anything about Liberator now; it would put Travis on guard that she was coming. He could tell Travis that Avon was here. That would put the cat among the pigeons, but how would it help him? He couldn’t hand Avon over to the Federation just for revenge; he’d be no better than the other man. Reluctantly he decided to keep quiet for now.

“I believe there is a reward,” the Six Families man said.

“There might be.” Travis sounded indifferent. “You’ll have to apply to the Justice Department.”

“I think you misunderstand me. Let me clarify. There is a reward, it is thirty million credits and it will be transferred to our accounts before you take your prisoner anywhere.”

“I am not an accountant!” Travis snarled. “This man is a fugitive from justice and I will take him whenever and wherever I like!”

There was a small choking sound from Marriel. Blake hadn’t even realised she was there. Her uncle glared at her and she straightened her face obediently. Blake wished that he could find the situation as amusing as she apparently did. Despite the man’s ridiculous histrionics he never found Travis exactly laughable, not after what he’d seen, and particularly not when his own hands were tied.

“I’m sure this can be sorted out with a quick communication to the Justice Department.” Aros said firmly. “In the meantime I have no objection to your guards assisting ours in ensuring that he is kept securely, and perhaps you could join me for some breakfast while we wait for a reply?”

“I don’t eat breakfast. I will arrange for a unit of mutoids to guard his cell.” Travis glared at Blake. “Don’t consider this a reprieve, Blake. You will be enjoying my hospitality soon enough.”

“I think I might have some breakfast first,” Blake told him. “Your hospitality is notoriously dreadful.”

 

He was back in his cell with no sign yet of the mutoids when Aros came to look down his nose at him from the other side of the force wall. “Marriel tells me you have something important to convey regarding Kerr Avon.”

Travis would bring this place down around his ears rather than let Blake go. It was too late to stop the deal for his life to go through. All he could do was prevent Avon from whatever the man planned next. Was that good or bad?

“What was Avon’s work about, when you knew him?”

“He was a brilliant theoretician, specialising in quantum security systems. No-one anticipated that he would put theory into practice quite so dramatically.”

“Do you know why he did it?” Blake asked.

Aros shrugged. “I imagine that he planned it all along, long before he chose a speciality. Kerr Avon was like that, always cold, calculating, always the long plan ahead. The real surprise is that he didn’t succeed.” He smiled. “Of course he’s making up for it now. Twenty five million credits for you and if this ship is all he says it is he’s going to be a very rich man.”

Blake bristled. “Avon has no right to Liberator.”

“And who does?” Aros asked coldly. “A convicted child molester with a messianic complex? If the builders of that ship want to put a claim in the courts for it they are welcome to do so. We’ll tie them up in litigation for long enough to rip all the new technology out of it. If we don’t end up with your Liberator at the end, who cares? We’ll have teleportation, a super fast drive, instant healing and whatever else Avon is promising. And if he can give it to us, he’s the one who gets the cash.”

“I won’t let you keep my ship,” Blake warned, temper rising now.

“You? You’re going to be in shackles for the rest of your short and uncomfortable life, Roj Blake. If you had any sense you’d be begging, not threatening, though it won’t make any difference either way. That space commander with the appalling reputation for brutality is going to have you in a few hours time. He seems to have a personal grudge against you, too. That’s going to be a nasty trip, I imagine. Now I’m a busy man. What was it that you wanted to tell me?”

Blake promptly decided that if Avon was going to rip these Six Families off over Liberator somehow, good for him. He’d actually rather that Judas had the money than this bastard. “I’ve told you. Avon’s got no right to sell Liberator.”

Aros blinked at him, puzzled. “So? Why would you imagine that anyone except you cares?” and he turned away

 

The mutoids arrived shortly after. Blake sat on his bed trying to look calm but his chained hand repeatedly fiddled with the teleport bracelet on his wrist. If Liberator arrived early, he could get teleported out of here and his troubles would be over.

The only thing that came after a couple of hours was a servitor with a covered plate. The guards frisked him thoroughly for weapons and poked around in the food, but finally let him through into the cell. He pushed his hood back slightly and Blake blinked.

“You’ve got a nerve. Is this a rescue or a gloating session?”

“Neither.” Avon spoke fast. “Listen carefully. Liberator’s been spotted in the far reaches of the system. I want you to take off the bracelet and not answer any of their calls.”

“And why would I do that?”

“Because if we are to get anything out of this at all you need to be on Travis’s ship before you escape. I’ll give Liberator her instructions.”

“You will? And what makes you think she’ll follow them? Jenna’s piloting that ship and she knows you betrayed all of us.”

“Leave that to me.” Avon sounded confident enough.

“And if Travis takes the bracelet? What happens then?”

“We’ll come and get you. Trust me, Blake.” Avon flashed a thin smile. “The guards are wondering what we’re talking about. I need to leave. Trust me, just this once. Everything is going to plan.” 

“Yes, but whose plan, though?”

“Mine, of course.”

He walked out of the cell. Blake stared after him, realising that he’d missed probably his last ever opportunity to strangle him. Damn.

Liberator was coming for him. All he had to do was let them know he was here and they’d teleport him to safety. No Travis, no Aros, no Avon. How could he possibly trust Avon? How often had Kerr Avon lied to him?

Blake thought about that last question for several minutes. Then, slowly and with reluctance so strong that it almost hurt, he slid the bracelet awkwardly off his chained wrist and tucked it away inside his waist band. 

 

The bracelet started humming an hour later, vibrating against his skin every few minutes with increasing urgency. Blake distracted himself by thinking of yet more epithets for Kerr Avon. After the fourth set of vibrations external distraction arrived in the shape of the mutoids entering his cell and marching him at gunpoint off to the Federation space cruiser. He saw no-one on the way and had no clue as to what else might be happening. 

Once on Travis’s ship he was, according to his understanding of Avon’s supposed plan, allowed to teleport up. He didn’t know if he was meant to wait for it to take off first, but he didn’t get a chance to put the bracelet on straightaway anyway. Travis appeared as he was shoved through the airlock door.

“Good. I want him in my sight on the bridge and covered by two guns at all times. Shoot to incapacitate. Servalan wants this one alive.”

“Very cautious,” Blake commented. “Been bitten too often, have we?” That was going to make things rather more difficult for him.

“When the interrogators have finished with you I’m going to request permission to kill you personally,” Travis told him. “In the meantime I’m going to be hunting down your friends. Fortunately no-one has ordered that they be taken alive.”

“You won't find them easy to catch,” Blake told him. 

“Your interrogation will tell us everything we need to know. Put him over there and ready for take off. Send a message to Supreme Commander Servalan - we have what we came for.”

There was no way that Blake could extract the bracelet and put it on with two guards watching him from six feet away. He needed a distraction.

“It's a bit of an anticlimax, isn't it, Travis? Buying me from someone else? No-one’s going to give you a commendation for that. They're going to laugh.”

“What do I care,” Travis snarled. “You'll be dead.”

“Not necessarily. Once you hand me over the politicos take charge. They might decide I'm more useful to the Federation rehabilitated.” Blake grinned at him. “I could end up living out my life in safety and comfort on Earth while you get nothing but prisoner transport jobs under the constant threat of court martial.”

Blake would never accept rehabilitation as the price of safety but Travis needn't know that. He could see the man wrestling with the notion as the ship took off. 

“Put us in orbit and then clear the room,” Travis finally ordered. “You two as well,” to Blake's guards. 

There. He'd reduced the problem to just Travis and himself. Or rather Travis and a gun, and himself in restraints. Unfortunately Travis now intended to shoot him. 

“They'll know you killed me,” Blake pointed out.

“No direct witnesses and I'm the senior officer. You died trying to escape. No- one will contradict me.” 

The bracelet hummed again. Only one chance for it. Blake turned his back on Travis, his neck prickling. 

“What are you doing?” 

“Making you shoot me in the back.” He was scrabbling for the bracelet with his awkwardly tied hands. “Explain that one to the court martial.”

“You think I won’t do it?” Travis was close up behind him, the gun jabbing into his spine. This was really not good. “Why are your hands down your trousers?”

Click open. Jam his wrist in. Close and pull both hands up to his mouth. “Teleport now!”

He heard the whine of the gun and for a second he thought it was too late. As Liberator materialised around him his knees gave way and he collapsed, unhurt, on the teleport platform.

“Blake! Are you injured?” That was Gan, rushing to his aid. He scrabbled to his feet. 

“No, I’m fine. Is Avon onboard?”

“Yes.” Gan sounded dark. 

“What about the rest of you?”

“All here. You’d better come up to the bridge, Blake.” 

He could feel the ship accelerating away from the cruiser at a speed that wouldn’t possibly be matched. “Can you find something to get these bloody things off me first?” He’d really had enough of restraints.

Everyone else was on the bridge. They had a guest as well; Aros, who glowered at Blake from his position tied up sitting on the floor back to back with Avon. A cold and determined Cally was holding a gun on both of them. 

“Blake! Are we glad to see you!” Jenna was at the controls. 

**Crew retrieval complete.** Zen said in what Blake imagined was a satisfied tone.

“I’m extremely glad to be back. Is Zen…?” Blake couldn’t think of a tactful way to ask if the machine was still homicidal in its hearing.

“Zen appears to be at least temporarily co-operative,” Avon said from the floor. “Jenna seems to have a remarkably good influence on it.”

“I just talked to it,” Jenna said, slightly defensively. “We all wanted you back. I explained that destroying planets wasn’t a particularly helpful way to go about it.”

“Simple,” Avon said, with slight sarcasm.” Why didn’t we think of that?”

“Shut up, Avon,” Vila said. “Nobody wants to hear from you. Someone tell me why we aren’t just throwing him out of an airlock?”

“Because we thought we’d wait and see what Blake had to say about it first,” Jenna said. 

“Blake is never in favour of throwing people out of airlocks,” Vila grumbled quietly. “We should have done it before he arrived.”

“How did he get here?” Blake asked, gesturing at Aros.

“Avon said two to teleport up. We thought he meant you. I don’t know why he brought that man but we assumed if he was with Avon he was probably bad news.”

“Why on earth did he come alone?” Blake asked Avon.

“He was under the impression that his guards were teleporting up too.”

“Wasn’t he armed anyway?”

Avon’s smile was smug. “Ah, but when I instructed Liberator’s crew via the bracelet to be ready to surrender control of the ship to me as soon as we got aboard, I was fairly sure that our reception was not going to be peaceful. Aros here didn’t have time to pull out his gun before we were both disarmed. Sometimes being unpopular can be useful.” 

“Who is he, anyway?” Cally asked. “He kept threatening us until you turned up, then he went quiet.”

“I’m not surprised. He’s the man who just sold me to Travis for thirty million credits. Of course twenty five million of that supposedly went to Avon. Did you get it?”

“Ah, that’s why there’s a huge fortune in Noridium in his bag,” Vila said. “I did wonder.”

“Of course I got it,” Avon said. “That was the entire point. Now we pick up the other hundred million down payment on Liberator. It’s in a cache on the third moon. Aros here is going to give us the co-ordinates.”

“Why should I?” Aros said to Blake. “You won’t kill me, not an idealist like you.”

“Of course Blake won’t kill you,” Avon said. “But if you don’t pay up we’ll leave you on Cygnus Alpha. You’ll have the same chances there that we did.”

“And if I do give you the co-ordinates?”

“We’ll leave you in a life support suit on the moon and let your family know where you are. If they aren’t too annoyed with you losing ninety five million credits I imagine they’ll send someone to get you.”

“I’ll give you the co-ordinates,” Aros said hurriedly.

“Why,” Cally asked, “is Avon calling the shots here when he’s the one who betrayed Blake?”

“Because,” Avon said curtly, “this is my plan. All of it.”

“Including the bit where you sit on the floor and we threaten to shoot you?” Cally was seldom intimidated by Avon.

“Including that, yes.” 

She looked over to Blake, who shrugged. “We’ll go along with it for the moment, But don’t let him up.”

The cache was where they were told it was, and recovery was straightforward. They left Aros standing forlornly on the moon’s surface, broadcast the co-ordinates back to Jotunhein and took off out of the Polaris system at full speed before Travis’s cruiser could pick them up again, one hundred and twenty five million credits and a full crew complement better off than when they had arrived. 

Which left the problem of Avon, still tied up on the floor of the bridge from where he was issuing the occasional order. Dealing with him really couldn’t be put off any longer, Blake conceded. He positioned himself in front of the man, feet apart. “Now you’re going to answer some questions, Kerr Avon.”

“Yes, I imagine I am.” Avon seemed unconcerned at the prospect. “How much haven’t you worked out for yourself yet?”

“You intended this all along.”

Avon shrugged. “More or less. The details were a little hazy in places, but this was the sort of outcome I was aiming at. It wasn’t meant to be nearly this difficult, though. You and Zen between you managed to royally screw everything up.” 

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” All that time he’d though Avon had sold him out. All that time. Now he wasn’t sure whether he had or not.

“Firstly because you’d never have gone along with it. All that risk just for mundane profit? No-one got liberated, no consciousness raising, no heroics to stir the masses. Most of the money didn’t even come from the Federation. It wasn’t your kind of operation and you wouldn’t have contemplated lending me Liberator for it.”

Blake digested that for a moment. Avon was probably right. He wouldn’t have risked everything just to turn a profit, even this sized one. “And secondly?”

“Secondly you’re a lousy actor. Safer for both of us if you thought it were genuine.” Avon wriggled an arm free enough from the rope to rub his jaw thoughtfully. “It wasn’t actually safer for me, as it turned out. But that was the idea.”

So that just left the real question. “Why the hell did you do it at all? We didn’t need the money.”

“I did.” Avon shook off the rest of the rope, stood up. Blake held up a hand to stop Cally from reacting. “One hundred and twenty five million credits. You decide how much, if any, of that I earned. If you’re fair, and even under extreme provocation you usually try to be fair, my share should be enough.”

“Enough for what?” Blake demanded.

“Enough to leave, of course. I told you. You’re going to get Liberator destroyed or captured and I don’t intend to be on board when it happens. I need the money- lots of money- to stay safe on my own.” 

“How much do you need?”

“You're not going to give him anything!” Vila protested. 

Avon was looking back at him, unabashed. “Sixty.” 

Sixty million credits was a phenomenal amount of money. Blake nodded. “And where shall we leave you?” 

“Karias will do.” It was a bustling independent trading planet in this sector.

“Very well. Zen, time to Karias.” 

**Eighteen standard hours at standard by seven.**

“Set course. Leave him alone,” he told the others. “He's got what he wants; he’s not going to try anything else.” Blake didn’t want to talk to anyone else right now. “I'll be in my quarters- have they been repaired yet, Zen?” 

**Confirmed.**

“Thank you, Zen.” 

After a few hours Blake gave up on trying to sleep and made his way down to the galley. He wasn’t entirely surprised to find Avon there. They’d spent a lot of time in the galley together when he and Avon were the only people on board. When he was Avon’s prisoner.

“Coffee?” Avon offered.

“Yes, thanks.” There was a silence while Avon dialled the order in.

“I’ve been talking to Zen,” Avon finally offered.

Blake had almost forgotten about his other headache. “And?”

“It seems to be a lot more stable with its pilot on board. It appears to be willing to go along with most of what Jenna suggests. Don’t be under the impression that this is your ship, Blake. If it belongs to anyone it’s hers. And it may not be entirely safe even in her hands.”

Blake contemplated that for a moment. “I can live with that. We need Liberator. We’ll take the risk.” He took the coffee. “We need you, too. I’ll take that risk as well.”

Avon shook his head. “I’m leaving.”

“And we both know why.” Blake could feel frustration grow. “It’s a stupid reason to go. Unnecessary. We can work something out.” 

Avon sighed. “Too many bridges burned, and not just with you but the others. There’s no reset button on this one, Blake. Let me go with a little grace.”

“What if it doesn’t work out for you, out there? Someone might hit you over the head and takes all your money.”

“They might,” Avon conceded. “Are you offering a bolthole?” 

“Yes, I suppose so. You’re Liberator’s family, Avon, however badly you’ve behaved. When you’ve wasted all your money on high living you can always play the prodigal son and return.”

Avon narrowed his eyes at Blake. “I’m never averse to a back up plan. There's a secure underground messaging service used by security specialists. I'll show you how to pick up messages from it. In the unlikely event that I need you I'll call."

He drained his mug. "I have to get back to my quarters now, get some rest. Once I'm on Karias I don't know where or when I'll sleep again." 

At the door he turned. "I suppose I ought to say thank you." 

"For the bolthole? Or the sixty million credits?"

"For not cutting and running back on Jotunheim. The temptation just to get out of there must have been overwhelming." 

"Travis had his gun against my spine. I heard him pull the trigger as the teleport started." Blake told him. "You were that close to getting me killed, Avon, for the sake of a few million credits. If I'd died would it have been worth it?" 

Avon paused, apparently thinking about it. "We'd still clear one hundred and twenty five million. You were only worth thirty to the Federation." He managed a brief smile at Blake. "I'm not good with other people's lives. After everything I put you through I ask you to trust me once and I come close to failing. I'll see you when we reach Karias." 

Avon didn’t reappear on the bridge until they were moving into high orbit around the independent planet. Then he was all business, giving Blake detailed instructions for picking up any messages on a regular basis. That small link made it feel a little less like he was leaving for good. No-one else seemed at all sorry that he was going. He was right about the bridges burned, Blake thought. He’d antagonised the rest of Liberator’s crew far beyond their tolerance. Blake’s planned last plea to Avon to stay went unspoken; he had obligations to the others. If Avon had stayed on board it was clear that there would have been a great deal of trouble. 

Blake thought that Zen at least might complain at losing his crew member but apparently the talk that Avon had had with the ship’s computer the night before had covered that. Avon finished the explanation of the secure network and left the flight deck without fuss or goodbyes to any of them. Blake walked with him down to the teleport room in case there was any more to be said, but it seemed that both men had said all that they were prepared to. 

Only when Avon was standing on the platform did he finally speak.

“I might drop back by, in a year or so, if I’m not too busy. See how Zen’s operating, what sort of mess you’ve made of things, who’s dead. That sort of thing.” 

Blake nodded. “Send a message and we’ll pick you up.”

“Ready to teleport now.”

Blake watched Kerr Avon shimmer into non-existence. Then he closed the teleport down and walked briskly away. His crew were watching him silently as he came back onto the flight deck. 

“Right,” he said to them, a smile slowly creeping back onto his face. “We’ve got the fastest ship in the Galaxy and sixty five million credits to play with. Let’s go and cause some real trouble out there.” 

The End


End file.
